


Love is a Battlefield

by anamatics



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/F, Fluff and Crack, Hipsters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1565534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa Stark is livin' large on Internet notoriety. She has just finished her masterwork, <i>Love is a Battlefield</i>, and it is probably the most popular fic of any bandom, like, ever.  Two sick little brothers and an invitation to be her father's date to an exhibit opening while her mother stays at home with them could very well bring together her very separate online and real lives in a way that Sansa isn't really ready for yet.</p><p>Or, Renly and Loras are secretly in a band, Sansa's the OG BNF of their bandom, and Margaery thinks the whole thing is hilarious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Accidental Pop Duo

**Author's Note:**

> vaguely inspired by [[x](http://sheeplocked.tumblr.com/post/80219291096/i-was-thinking-about-game-of-thrones-the-other-day)] which is a lovely piece of fanart.

**Renly**

His brother had brought him back a banjo from a trip to the north when he was twelve.  The purposes of the trip had been two fold - a visit to Renly's uncle Ned, and to give a speech at a university that sat in the shadows of the great Stark fortress of Winterfell.

"Ned said you might like it," Robert had explained, slapping Renly on the back and ignoring the glare that his pretty wife (who didn't like Renly at all) was giving them both.  "He'll teach you, if I can ever get him out of local government and down here."

Renly goes to university with a banjo slung over his back. Robert got his wish, Ned Stark had come to King's Landing to serve in Robert's cabinet, and Renly had grown up in a world of politics and smoke-filled back room dealings. Renly had grown up seeing more of his Uncle Ned than Ned's own children as Robert, Ned, and a coalition lead by the Lannister golden boy dissolved parliament, called for elections and rose to political prominence all in the course of what felt like years of long, hard-fought war.

He's too young to remember anything else, an uncle at already and going away from the protective bubble of his brothers' careful watch for the first time in his life.  He'd lingered, after finishing school, to help out and try his hand at politics, but one year had turned into two years of mind-numbingly dull clerking for his brothers and uncle.  He could speak the language of politics, but without some sort of a degree, they all said, he was useless to them beyond being a very efficient clerk.  He'd spent a year teaching under-privileged children too, trying to see if he liked that before he invested four years into a degree in it.

"D'ya really play that?" The girl across the hall wants to know as he settles into his new home in the student housing complex a few blocks from the university. She's popping gum and staring at Renly's battered banjo with some trepidation.  "Because you and the guy in 3G should get together and make some music sometime."  She waves her hand dismissively.  "He's from the Reach, I think, so he's probably never met a northman, but I saw him moving a keyboard into his room."

"I'm not..." Renly begins, but the girl is gone smacking her gum and closing her door before Renly can clarify that he's not from the north at all.  He's never even been there.  He's saved the moment of standing awkwardly in the middle of the hallway by his phone, and he answers it to hear his brother's voice on the other line.

Stannis is calling to see if he's settled.  Robert probably won't call at all, but Renly is used to that. He leaves the door half-open and heads back to his bedroom, slumping down onto the mattress that he's yet to put sheets on.

"They think I'm from the north," he whines.

"It's the beard, Renly," Stannis says with a chuckle.  "Even if you're older than most of the first years, you're far too young to have one. Just shave and they're sure to recognize you for who you are." He pauses, "Or were you sitting in your room picking on that damn banjo again?"

Stannis has never been much of a fan of the banjo.  But then again, Stannis hates fun.

"I was moving it into my room," Renly replies, "The girl across the hall saw it and made all sorts of totally wrong assumptions."  He sighs and listens to Stannis talk his ear off about what Robert's up to, and his worries about the pending debt crisis that's facing the nation.  Renly just wants to be in school, but it seems the politics will follow him no matter where he goes.

He's half-way unpacked when there's a knock on the half open door.  "It's open," Renly calls, shoving boxers and underwear into a drawer hurriedly. He tugs on the collar of his battered t-shirt advertising some community run he'd participated in a few years ago.  It is impossibly stuffy in here.

A guy with curly brown hair and a charming smile is leaning against the doorway.  He's wearing a terribly garish floral-printed polo, but Renly supposes that those are at least somewhat fashionable right now. "Are you the one with the banjo?" he asks, and he's raising an eyebrow, looking impossibly intrigued.

He looks as intrigued as Renly feels, rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck and pointing to where he's carefully left the banjo leaning against the wall.  "You the guy with the keyboard?"

"That's me," the guy says, bending to squint at the banjo.  "I've never seen one of these in person, they're not really popular back home," he confesses, trailing one finger almost reverently down the neck.  "I love northern music though."

"So does my uncle," Renly says with a small smile.  "He's from up there, Winterfell."  He jams his hands into his pockets. He doesn't know why he's almost hesitant to say where Uncle Ned is from.  Winterfell's a big place these days, not like how it used to be, a simple castle on the moors.

"And you?" The guy asks, straightening up.  His smile is almost distractingly charming, and Renly's grateful for his beard - it hides the flush he fells creeping up the back of his neck.  "You don't have a northern accent."

"Nah, I'm from here," Renly answers.  He's about to introduce himself when a girl's voice comes in from the still open doorway.

"Loras, grandmother wants to say goodbye," A girl with the same brown curls as Renly’s new friend.  She is maybe a handful of years younger than him at the most, sticks her head into the room.  She takes in Renly for a moment, her eyes narrowing and Renly knows going off of how she looks at him that she knows _exactly_ who he is. What's interesting, at least to Renly, is that she makes no move to identify him as the Prime Minister's little brother. "Oh--" she starts, smiling prettily at both of them from the doorway.

A second voice filters down the hall, and the guy’s (who Renly can only assume is called Loras) shoulders slump.  "Where did that boy get to, doesn't he know who valuable my time is?"

"Coming, grandmother!" He calls, looking only a little exasperated.  He steps forward, offering a hand to Renly. "I'm Loras," he says, all charming smile and flashing very white teeth.  Renly thinks he could be a movie star, given the right role.

"Renly," Renly replies.  He recovers himself nicely enough to shake well, as Robert and Stannis had taught him, and he encounters a firm handshake and warm, soft skin.

"We should jam sometime."

"Definitely."

-

Loras knows who Renly's brothers are, that much is obvious after the second time they have a conversation lasting more than a passing greeting in the hallway on their way to or from class.  Renly supposes that turn-about is fair play, given the private little smile that graces Loras' charming face as he looks up from a rather unfortunate photo of Robert with the banner headline 'PM SAYS DEBT CRISIS "A LAUGH"' splashed above the fold. Renly knows who Loras' father is, and, perhaps more importantly, who his grandmother is.  There are headlines about them in the papers as well

What is so refreshing about Loras is that he doesn't ask Renly about Robert's slowly eroding control of the party, or about politics at all.  He asks him about music, about his classes, and what he wants to do at the weekend.  Renly learns things about him in dribs and drabs, snatching fragments of conversation and trying not to become too enamored with this beautiful guy from Highgarden and his wonderful southron charm. 

Renly finds out that Loras grows practically everything that can take root in dirt on his balcony one afternoon over a discussion on the best beers they’ve had.  They’re impossibly impoverished, drinking some of Loras’ brother’s homebrew out of mason jars on the balcony of Loras’ apartment.  There’s so much green here, and Renly’s entranced at how Loras has managed to get roses, of all things to grow in a container garden.   Loras explains it, leaning in so close that they’re touching, talking about soil weights and composition.  “I could start something for you,” he says, encouraging Renly to do the same as he with a gesture of his mason jar to the far corner of the balcony where he keeps his supplies.

Renly, who has a brown thumb, tells Loras that he'll keep an indoor plant only if Loras comes by and reminds him to water it.  Regularly.

They're flirting.

They're flirting and it makes Renly really nervous.

It isn’t that people don’t know, Robert and Stannis both do and are totally fine with it.  Robert’s wife had been worried, briefly, about how her children would be affected, but her brother had stepped in and had pointed on that literally nothing had changed about Renly since yesterday, except that he could finally be honest with them.  Renly had been forever grateful that Jaime Lannister, despite all the bitchiness of his sister, is a decent enough guy.  It is more that Renly’s never really been in a position where he can more than be attracted to someone from a far.  Loras is pretty outrageously gay, and he doesn’t bother to hide it.

The girl across the hall catches them watching a movie together with the door open late one night with the sound on low.  Loras is making fun of the 'great buffoon of a man' who is playing the romantic lead, while Renly picks out a melody on the ever-fascinating-to-Loras banjo.

"Do you guys need me to close the door?"  She calls, one hand on the handle.  She’s got a knowing smirk on her face and her eyebrows are waggling dangerously. 

Renly goes scarlet, blushing up to the tips of his ears, and glances at Loras.  He has a healthy flush on his cheeks as well, but just shrugs.  "If you want," he says, in that effortless dismissal that Renly knows comes from a childhood growing up in the shadow of one of the greatest political and philanthropic forces in all the country.

Their neighbor closes the door and the banjo is forgotten as the implication of what she'd thought they were up to sits heavily on the air around them.  Loras turns, knee curled up to his chest and his arm slug casually over the back of the couch.

"She seriously thought--" he laughs then, high and beautiful.  "I would _never_ with the door open..."

And somehow Renly swallows all of his nervousness and cocks his head to one side.  "Well," he points out.  "The door is closed now."

"So it is," Loras replies.  "So it is." And Renly spends rest of the night tangled up with Loras and wondering why the hell he didn't think of doing this sooner.

-

They vibe, and Loras' endless fascination with Renly's musical ability leads them to a quiet bar on a school night, drinking beer on a six inch raised platform that purportedly is a stage.  It's an open mic night and Loras has signed them up under the name 'rosenstag' and Renly thinks it's horrible.  He's said as much, and Loras has replied that he's more than welcome to think up a better name for their act because the next best he can come up with is 'synthbanjo' and that's just as horrible.

Loras has figured out how to create beats that actually fit with the banjo.  The two musical genres should not go together.  Northern music is not the smooth, polished, electronic sound of the Reach and they both know it.  It's a musical odd couple, but as Renly settles the banjo on his lap and Loras makes a last-second adjustment to his keyboard there's something that comes over him then.  He knows.  He just _knows_ that this is the start of something great.

The tiny crowd leans forward, intrigued and skeptical of their sound.  Some people know them, know Renly or Loras though their family's reputations, but most people have no idea who these two guys in vests and collared shirts and cheap plastic sunglasses are.  Renly's ears are scarlet the entire time he sings, but Loras is smiling at him, and honestly, that's enough to drive all fear from his mind.

And the people there _like_ them.  They ask about how they’d decided to combine too completely alien styles of music together.  They buy beers for Loras and Renly and the bar’s owner tells them that they’re great.

They get asked back two weeks later, to perform an opener for some lady-fronted band that Loras and his sister both like, and Renly finally gets formally introduced to Margaery.  She's actually quite charming, flirty until she sees how Renly looks at Loras, after which she informs them that their band’s name is absolutely horrible and that they'll need a better one as soon as possible.  Renly is pretty sure he agrees with that sentiment, but he’s got _nothing_ and Loras’ naming skills are legendarily terrible, by Renly’s estimation.

It is their first official gig, and Renly's nervous that some of the prime minister’s body guards that he's always secretly called the King's Guard after the stories of King's Landing's past that he'd grown up hearing from Stannis and his Uncle Ned are going to swoop in and sweep him off the stage.  He hasn't told Stannis or Robert that he's doing this, and it's a sort of little thrill just thinking about doing something so completely and utterly outside the old political juggernaut that is his family.  He wonders if Loras feels the same way, but he has his grandmother's blessing, at least according to him.  Margaery is the one who's going to steal Robert's job, apparently.

_She just has to grow up a little first_ , Renly thinks. She looks impossibly young, in a sundress with big black 'x' marks on her hands, leaning over Loras' keyboard and helping him to tune Renly's borrowed guitar.

"You'll be great," she whispers to them both when they’re waiting back stage, kissing Loras' cheek and squeezing Renly's hand.  "Break a leg."

"I think that's only for theatre," Loras points out, running anxious hands through his hair.

"Whatever," Margaery replies, turning him by the shoulders and pushing him out on stage.  Renly follows, half a step later, and the lights are so bright he can barely see the gaggle of people gathered in front of the stage.

Loras walks to the front of the stage and puts a hand over his eyes, staring out at the crowd.  "So," he says, his voice full of false gravitas that Renly can hear but everyone else probably cannot, "You've never heard of us."

The crowd laughs and Renly watches as Loras explains that they're students, that this isn't the usual opening act for the band that's coming up later, because their lead singer hurt his ankle.  "Anyway," Loras explains.  "We haven't got a name yet, because my sister thinks I don't have a creative bone in my body," he winks at Renly, "I've been assured I have several."

Renly shakes his head and plays a pretty terrible rimshot, which sounds weird as hell on a banjo, but the crowd giggles and Renly relaxes into the music.

The way that Loras has arranged the music is actually pretty ingenious.  Renly will pick up a melody, play it for a few bars, before Loras folds it neatly onto the keyboard synth and Renly is able to progress the song once more.  It creates this dreamy, twangy feel that is upbeat while still feeling relaxing.  They play three songs with the banjo and one with the guitar, the song that Renly wrote about something he'd read for one of his history classes.  It’s about a girl whose spirit was trapped in an animal, and how the animal was killed before her body died.  It's haunting, definitely Loras' favorite if the wide, bright smile on his face is anything to go off of after they play the last cord. The crowd is... actually into it, and by then the crowd for the main event is pretty thick.  Their applause is enthusiastic, to say the least.

"I'd say suggestions are always welcome for a name," Loras says as they collect their things. "But we don't even have a website yet so..."

Renly leans over and takes the mic from him.  "I'll get right on that."  He gestures towards the back of the bar.  "We'll be back there for the rest of the night, if you want to come say hi."

They're sweaty and gross when they get off stage, and Margaery is over the moon.  She jabs an accusatory finger into Loras' chest.  "You never told me you were good."

Glancing at each other, they both grin sheepishly and let her hug them, sweaty college boys and all.

-

They never really decide on a name for the band.  On paper, they're 'rosenstag' because literally no one can think of anything better, but really they're known around King's Landing as 'That band with the Banjo' and people actually are coming out to see them, not the bands that they're opening for. 

It's strange, Renly thinks as he watches Loras sleepily doodle on the corner of his biology notes as they're studying for finals, it feels like this could go on forever.  He’s never had easy companionship like this before, or someone who has never asked for him to be anything more than who he is.  He could, he realizes, be head over heels in love with Loras Tyrell.

“Oh,” Loras’ voice pulls him from his thoughts.  Renly rubs at his mouth and regards Loras, pen resting against his chin. “You’d gone all vacant.”

“Just thinking…” Renly replies, pushing away his history notes. 

“What about?”

“You.” And he’s flushing when Loras leans over and kisses him slow and easy.  Renly tangles his fingers in Loras’ hair and this is so _perfect_ that he just wants it to last forever.

-

Over the winter break, Loras talks Renly into coming down to the Reach for a week after all the holiday festivities have finished.  He takes the train because explaining to Stannis why he needed the car for the week didn't sound particularly fun. As soon as Stannis heard the word 'Reach' or, gods forbid, 'Tyrell' he was bound to get defensive and then Renly would never get anywhere.

Margaery is taking a film class, or something, and somehow manages to sweet talk them into 'helping her with a project' that boiled down to them frolicking, essentially, in the river than ran behind Loras' house.  She sets it to one of their songs and hands it in for credit, Renly has a private moment of being appalled as to what constitutes 'school work' for kids these days.

Somehow, and Margaery swears that it wasn't her; the project winds up on the Internet.  Renly doesn't really mind that, the wide shot that Margaery had done the video in makes it next to impossible to tell who they are, especially with the grainy quality of the upload.

They've hit 20,000 hits on that video when Stannis calls, utterly irate.

"Where are you?" he demands before Renly can even say hello.

"Loras's family's house," Renly says, looking sheepishly at Loras and Margaery, who are looking at him curiously. He’d warned them that this might happen.  Loras’ grandmother hand thought the whole thing hilarious, but told him that acting so gaily, so publicly, was probably not in his best interests.  Going off of Stannis’ tone, she might have had a point.

"Which is where?"

"Um, Highgarden?" Renly ventures twisting the hem of his shirt around his finger.

"You and Loras Tyrell shot a video of yourselves frolicking like a bunch of queers in a river and had the gall to upload it to the Internet," And Renly would have laughed, because Stannis sounds so completely and utterly offended by the really non-threatening video that it's almost funny, if it isn't so terrible.  Renly swallows worriedly.  "I'm sending a car. Do you have any idea the scandal you have just kicked up?"

They never perform without their faces obscured again.  It is the compromise that Renly makes with Stannis (because Robert thinks the whole thing is a laugh and slaps Renly on the back when he hears about it) and Loras goes along with it because he has a thing about things matching.  Eventually they settle on simple theatre masks that cover the eyes mostly.  Renly makes a headband and attaches plastic antlers to it, since he is a Baratheon, and they are stags.  Loras wears a crown of roses in his hair.  They’re absolutely ridiculous, according to Margaery.  They are the rose and the stag now; they can never be Renly and Loras, aspiring musicians, ever again.


	2. Love is a Battlefield

_Four Years Later –_

**Sansa**

**Love is a Battlefield** by **wolfgirl23**

_7 Kingdoms Historical AU.  The Rose and the Stag are knights cast on two opposite sides of the War of Five Kings, yet they both carry a secret in their hearts that no one save themselves can know. FINALLY COMPLETED!_

Status: Complete | Words: 87,345 | Hits: 10,256 | Kudos: 3,984 | Comments: 1,258 | Bookmarks: 537 Collections: 5

Sansa Stark is inordinately proud of herself as she reads over her author’s note for the fifth time to ensure she hasn’t made any typos and finally, finally, after almost a year, hits the submit button.  She leans back in her uncomfortable desk chair, and waits.

One notification, two, three, five, twelve.

Watching people react to her posting the stunning, tragic, _painstakingly-researched_ conclusion to her great epic in real-time is absolutely amazing. 

"Is it live?"  Sansa jumps about a foot in the air, slamming her hands down on her keyboard and turning to see her little sister, Arya, leaning against the doorway, a large bowl of something in her hands and a fork hanging from her mouth.  She's so used to living alone that interruptions like this, due to her unfortunate houseguest, are rather... alarming.  "Because I maintain the fact that if you changed some of the imagery around you could totally market it as a historical novel and not some creepy story about, you know, real people.  Shit's gross, Sans."

It's a conversation that they've had many times before.  Sansa knows it's weird and a little gross on an intellectual level, and she justifies it to herself by insisting to Arya (and the handful of other people who know of her hobby) that no one knows much at all about rosenstag's band members.  They go by 'the stag' and 'the rose' and they've never performed, as far as Sansa or the rest of the bandom can tell, without their faces obscured.  She thinks that this is an appropriate enough level of anonymity that she can get away with writing about them within feeling super weird about it.  She has friends who write stories about Dany Targaryen like it's going out of style, and she's... well, Sansa's never really been into that.

Arya is looking at her expectantly, like she expects the same old argument out of Sansa's mouth, but Sansa's decided, with this story well and truly done, that she's not talking about it anymore.

"What are you eating," Sansa demands, closing her eyes and wishing that Bran and Rickon both weren't sick at home with the flu and that Arya didn't have a fencing competition in town this coming weekend.  She's here because she doesn't want to get sick, and because their mother has all but kicked her out because the flu would 'ruin her shot at the title.'

"Carbs," Arya explains, tilting her bowl towards Sansa. There's pasta and what looks like cheese in it.  It looks disgusting. "Gotta get 'em in now."

"What about like... green things?"  Sansa ventures.  "Salad? Broccoli?"

"Breakfast," Arya answers, raising an eyebrow.  "Don't you know anything about preparing for a a match at all?"

"Um, no?"  She gets up and stretches.  She'll read the comments on her story tonight, once there are more of them so she can get to her replies in one short burst of mental energy.  "I emailed you the scrubbed version, if you want to read it. Dad too."

Arya grins, bright and all teeth.  "Excellent," she says and twists, digging her phone from her pocket.  She disappears off down the hall towards the kitchen, saying, mostly to herself.  "Dinner reading."

_Love is a Battlefield_ is Sansa's masterwork, at least in terms of rosenstag's fandom.  It's probably the most well-read and recommended story in any bandom in recent memory, mostly because Sansa has put her knowledge of Westerosi history together with a knack for writing that she hadn't known she’d possessed before she'd started into this lengthy historical narrative about the Rose and the Stag and their torrid romance.  Arya swears that she's just reading for the sword fights, because Sansa's consulted with her countless times to make them accurate, but Sansa knows that she's legitimately into it at this point.  This is the grand and tragic conclusion to nearly a hundred and fifty pages of hard, painful, work.  She's so proud of it.  It’s her _baby._

"When are you going to just say that you're doing a history degree as well?" her friends and family keep asking her, but Sansa just shakes her head.  History, like writing, is a hobby for her.  She wants to get into politics, to succeed where her brother Robb had burned out, and take up the Stark name in parliament should her father ever retire.

"Are you still going to that thing with dad tonight?" Arya calls as Sansa closes her laptop and picks up her political philosophy text book.

Her mother is stuck at home with two sick kids, and her father, by virtue of the Prime Minister attending, has to go to this gala museum exhibit opening.  Sansa had actually being dying to go see it, the history and art of the Seven Kingdoms period of Westeros’ history is beyond fascinating to her, so she'd jumped at the opportunity to play chaperone to her father when he'd asked.

Arya is reading on her phone, mouth full of noodles, at the kitchen table.

"Yeah," Sansa says, sitting down next to her. She's got her dress all picked out and hanging in its bag from the drycleaners on the back of her closet door.  "Are you going to be okay on your own for the night?"  Arya isn't at university yet, after all.  The fact that she's been allowed to stay here all week is really a favor to their mother by the headmaster of Arya's school, who desperately wants her to win at nationals and certainly doesn't want her getting sick right before the tournament.

"I figured I'd go talk to your hot neighbor again," Arya says, pointing in the general direction of the door over her shoulder, mouth full of pasta.  Sansa's about to protest that she's supposed to be keeping an eye on Arya not playing matchmaker, when Arya's eyes go wide. "Oh man, Sans, you had the Lion Faction take Tyler's eye?"

Sansa shrugs, she'd debated it when she was writing it, thinking it might be too gruesome, but had eventually rolled with it. "It was realistic."

"It's gonna make him fug," Arya grumbles, her head bowed, continuing to read.  "Ryan isn't going to like it."

"They're in love," Sansa replies breezily, and maybe swooning, just a little bit, at how ridiculously romantic it is.  "The stag and the rose are destined, nothing, not even missing eyeballs, will keep them apart.  Plus, as he says later on, eye patches are really dashing."

"You're disgustingly romantic," Arya grumbles

"You're carb-loading," Sansa retorts.  "That's gross."

"Whatever," Arya grumbles, not looking up, she is evidently still reading.  "Don't you have to like, do your hair or something?"

It's then that Sansa catches a glimpse of the clock over the stove and lets out a startled shriek.  It's six-thirty; she has less than an hour to get ready.  How had she lost track of time?  She'd been fact-checking some last minute details and doing her usual find-and-replace routine for Arya, but she'd had plenty of time then.

She gets ready hurriedly, braiding her hair when it's still damp even though she knows better and wrapping it around her head, eyeliner pencil held between her teeth as she goes.  Arya has hollered that she's making Sansa something 'substantial' for dinner because “little finger sandwiches are not a proper meal and you’re skin and bones as it is.”

She's into her dress when her dad arrives, thank goodness.  The event is white tie, something that Robert's brought back into vogue, and her father looks dashing.

"And how are you holding up?"  He’s asking Arya as she tucks a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into a bag for Sansa to eat.  "Not sick?"

"Nope," Arya replies, shaking her head violently.  "I'll be ready for the tournament tomorrow.  Are you still coming?"

There's a sad look in her father's eyes that Sansa sees but Arya probably does not.  Guilt, she knows, for leaving the north for such long periods of time during their childhoods and coming down to King's Landing to be a member of Robert Baratheon's cabinet.  He's trying to make up for it, now that they're older and can travel more easily.  It’s definitely a blessing that so many of Arya's tournaments are in the capitol, and Sansa knows that her father is probably the closest with Arya, out of all his children.  Sometimes she’ll feel a pang of jealousy, when she goes to watch Arya’s tournaments with her father.  She just doesn’t have that same close bond with her father, despite the fact that they are closer now that Sansa’s at university in the city and can see him regularly. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Napkin," Arya adds, shoving one into her hands and positively beaming at their father.  "Don't want to mess up your dress."

Her father kisses her forehead.  "You look lovely, Sansa."

"Thank you," she replies.

"Sansa finally finished!" Arya adds, because she's a big blather mouth and if Sansa could sew her mouth shut she would.

Ned Stark leans in, a delighted smile on his face.  "No one dies?"

Sansa nods.  "The only casualty is an eyeball."  And like, scores of the stag's and the rose's men, but that's really beside the point.  Sort of.  It's not plot relevant, at any rate.  Sometimes you just have to kill off some armies, stuff happens.

"You'll have to send it to me, Sansa.  Maybe I can put you in touch with some publishing companies, I do know people, and it's really well done."

Sansa bites her lip and looks away. She's never told anyone she knows in real life but Arya that it's a rosenstag story.  They all think that she's just super into writing historical fiction, and she's okay with perpetuating the lie.  The story is self-indulgent in the worst way when read as fanfiction, and she sort of hates that everyone she knows is at least somewhat aware of her writing the story.  Arya cannot keep her mouth shut when she is into something.  "I don't know dad..." she hedges.

She's afraid to try and scrub it, to clean it up and try and publish it as original.

The opening itself is a fairly subdued affair.  The museum, which Sansa has been to several times before on school trips and by herself (mostly because she can never find anyone to go with), is closed to the public.  Her father leads her in, pulling an invitation from his breast pocket and presenting it to the tall, imposing blonde woman who is evidentially some sort of a security officer. 

“I hear they’ve recruited you for concerts now,” her father jokes to the woman as she checks their names against a list on a tablet.  It all seems very formal; Sansa knows that her father has a famous face and that she’s been photographed in the papers more than once, she doesn’t really see the point when she’s asked for her ID. “That must be exciting.”

“I go where Renly goes,” the woman replies quietly, humming as she takes Sansa’s ID and scans it into the system.  “Is your wife sick, Minister?”

Sansa’s father shakes his head.  “Bran and Rickon both have the flu,” he explains, patting Sansa on the shoulder.  She leans into him, smiling.  “Cat didn’t want to come all the way back here and leave them alone, so we’re having a father-daughter date.”  He takes the invitation back from the security guard.  “Sansa, this is Brienne Tarth, she’s Renly Baratheon’s personal bodyguard. Brienne, this is my eldest daughter, Sansa.”

“ _Misappropriated_ bodyguard,” Brienne Tarth mutters, but she tucks the tablet under one arm and shakes Sansa’s hand firmly. “It is very nice to meet you, Sansa.”  She has a nice smile, when she does smile, and Sansa grins back up at her, a little awestruck at what Arya would probably call the ‘sheer force of her awesomeness.’  There’s something about the woman that makes Sansa think that Arya would fall head over heels in love with her.

“Likewise,” Sansa replies.  She lets her hand drop to her side and smiles politely as Brienne leans in to whisper something in her father’s ear. 

“If I see him, I will be sure to mention it,” Her father replies, smiling and turning to lead Sana into the museum proper.

“She’s in a band?” Sansa asks when they’re out of earshot, because that’s honestly really cool.  “With who?”

“With Renly,” Her father replies distractedly.  “And Renly’s friend Loras Tyrell.  I’m sure he’ll be here tonight and can tell you all about it.  Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I bought him his first banjo, way back when.”

_Banjo_ … Sansa thinks, just a little panicked.  She tries to remind herself that there is no way that Renly Baratheon, unapologetic hipster that he is, could ever be cool enough to be in a band.  He was, honestly, a lot like her.  They were both total history nerds, and the few times that they’d had a chance to sit down and talk, the conversation had flowed easily.  “Are they… any good?” she hedges, trying to recover herself before she made it really obvious that she was off on some rosenstag induced tangent in her head.

Her father shrugs.  “Never really listened to them.  I think Robert sent me a video they did once, I’ll see if I can find it tonight.”  He tilts his head back to look at the ceiling.  “Or maybe it was Stannis… Either way, that was _years_ ago now, back before this whole mess really got started.”

This whole mess, Sansa knows, referred to the prime minister's rapidly falling public approval rating.  They were in the midst of a great debt crisis, they had been for years.  The prime minister didn't seem particularly concerned by it, which is why Sansa's father is spending more and more time in the capitol, trying to fix things before they get any worse.

"It's really not a big deal," Sansa hedges, trying to push down her curiosity.  Her father did not particularly care for speaking of politics around her, despite the fact that he knew Sansa to have the best mind for it out of all of his children.  Robb's failure and subsequent withdrawal from public life when he had been such a promising young MP seemed to have sealed the deal for Ned Stark when it came to Sansa's own aspirations.  She knows that he doesn't mean anything by it, and that he'll respect her if she actually puts her degree to good use.  This is the hard part.

Sansa makes pleasantries with the people where that she knows, dodges away from the prime minister's son (because he's a raging asshole that Sansa wants absolutely nothing to do with after the last time they spent any prolonged amount of time together), and ends up down one of the far corridors of newly opened exhibits, staring up at a dragon skull.  The hairs on the back of her neck are standing on edge and she's a little nervous, just looking at the latest archeological find from the excavations in the catacombs of the Red Keep.

"I didn't think that they'd let you in after what your bother did," comes a snide, almost mocking voice from just behind Sansa.

She's scared out of her skin for the second time today and curses her terrible luck.  It seems that her dodging did not go unnoticed.  She forces her politest smile onto her face and turns to face the intruder.  "Hello, Joff," she says tentatively.

He's wearing a blazer over a t-shirt at a white-tie event, and sneakers with his dress slacks.  He looks like the absolute shitheel that he is, and Sansa wants to roll her eyes at him.  The problem is that he's proven that he's more than capable of making Sansa's life hell if she crosses him, so she's part way to placating him already.  "Stark," he says.  "Why aren't you putting on airs with your father?"

She shrugs.  "Maybe I wanted to see the exhibit and he was just my way in?"

"You've always been a fucking nerd, haven't you?"  Joff scoffs, scowling at the dragon head.  "Ever since high school you've been lost in  your own world with that stupid band and no time for anything else."  What he doesn't say, as he leans closer, his eyes full of anger and irritation at her mere presence is that Sansa had fallen into her carefully constructed online world to escape his constant harassment and advances.  She'd dated him, briefly, because it had seemed like the thing to do at the time.  Now though, Sansa wants to go back in time and shake her seventeen year old self for ever being so smitten.

Sansa has had two bad breakups in her life, and is now determinedly single.  Joff had been the first, the second she will never, ever speak of.  She doesn't think she can stomach the confusion and the self-loathing of actually realizing her growing, almost desperate attraction to people who were not men ever agian, and it's only getting worse as time goes on.  She writes about guys, gay guys, because they're safe and she doesn't have to worry about the overwhelming feeling of desperate incomprehension that comes when she reads some of her friend's femslash stories.

She doesn't think about that break up because it had been her own fear that had pulled her away from what could have been a good thing.  A thing that wasn't Joffery Baratheon at any rate.

"Joff," she tries, because placating him has always come easier than confrontation.  "That was a long time ago."

"That doesn't mean I can't hold a grudge," He hisses at her.

"Don't you have court to hold over your loyal subjects, Joffrey?" a third voice calls from the shadows towards the back of the exhibit, Sansa jumps.  This voice is a lot friendlier sounding than Joffrey’s and Sansa takes a hurried step away from Joffrey, worried at what it might look like to a casual observer.  A guy with curly hair and a very flatteringly cut tux is leaning against one of the display cases, regarding them with interest.  "I'd hate to think of what might happen if your friends have to entertain themselves around your mother."

It isn't a threat, so much as a careful assertion of facts. Joffrey, apparently, takes it as one despite it sounding obviously hollow to Sansa.  He glares at Sansa for a long moment before he turns and stomps back towards the party, the tips of his ears bright red with irritation.

"You're Ned Stark's daughter, right?"  The guy pushes himself forward and fully into the light and smiles a disarmingly charming smile at her.  Sansa's a little star-struck, because he's beautifully gorgeous and totally just rescued her from what was sure to become a screaming match with Joffrey Baratheon.  As far as she's concerned, he's her knight in shining armor.

"Yes," she says, holding out her hand.  She feels like she should know his face.  It's familiar, but she cannot place it.  "I'm Sansa."

"Loras Tyrell," he introduces himself and Sansa finds herself nodding. It would make sense that he's in one of the big families in Westerosi politics, but if Sansa remembers correctly from Robb and her father's spirited debates before he left politics altogether, Loras is the youngest son of that family and something of a black sheep.  She thinks that she remembers Robb mentioning that he was a botanist, but that seems terribly unglamorous.

Still, he shakes her hand with a flourish that Sansa really isn’t used to and offers her his arm.  "I'm sure that, while we are both thoroughly uninteresting to the press, that we shouldn't be lingering away from the crowds, people might talk."

Sansa laughs, taking his arm. He is right, after all, the gossip rags and websites love a juicy scandal.  They've been up in arms for weeks over Renly Baratheon being seen with a girl that Sansa is pretty sure is Loras' sister.  Arya is convinced that there’s absolutely nothing going on there.  She keeps going on and on about chemistry when she catches Sansa sneaking looks at the gossip magazines waiting to check out at the grocery store.  

Still, she’s learned that it’s better to not read too much into the contents of those magazines. They’d ripped Robb to shreds when he’d left the public eye, and her father had always told her that it wasn’t worth it to bother with what the people who read magazines like that thought.  "Thank you," she says politely, letting Loras lead her back towards the main exhibit hall and the crowd of people once more.

"He's an ass, it's nothing," Loras replies.

-

She ends up getting invited out with Loras and a few of his friends to some sort of karaoke bar after the party's over.  The bar that they want to go to is only three blocks from Sansa's apartment, and she's able to convince her father easily that nothing bad is going to happen, should she walk home afterwards. Loras Tyrell, being ever-dashing, had even offered to see her to her apartment door once he’s standing before Ned Stark, looking not even a little bit intimidated by the position that Sansa’s father holds in Robert Baratheon’s government.  Ned nods approvingly at Loras and clasps Sansa on the shoulder and smiles broadly at her.  "I'm glad that you found someone to talk to," he says in a low voice, glancing around before adding, "These things can be incredibly boring."

"I had fun, dad," she says with a bright smile, trying not to think of Joffrey’s mocking voice and sneering face.  She’d known there had been a risk that he’d be here when she’d agreed to come, and just as she’d suspected, he’d tried to ruin it for her.  She’d been rescued this time, however, so it hadn’t been so bad. "Don't worry about that."

He laughed.  "I never do," he says, and heads towards the door.

They take a cab with Loras' sister, Margaery, and Renly Baratheon, who's messing around on his phone and whispering excitedly to Margaery about something that he's pulled up.  Sansa hasn't seen Renly in ages and soon he puts his phone away telling Margaery that he'll "read it later."  Sansa can’t meet Margaery’s curious gaze, her cheeks burning as she’s squeezed between Loras and Renly.

Loras tilts his head, "Did it finish?" he asks, an intrigued look on his face, leaning over to poke Renly in the shoulder.

"Yeah, looks like no one died too," Renly replies excitedly, his head bobbing up and down.

Loras makes a face.  "Shhh! Don't ruin it!"

"Sorry."

Sansa swallows nervously and decides not to ask about it.  Arya would say she was being completely and utterly paranoid, but she cannot shake the feeling that she knows exactly what they're whispering about.  The idea, somehow, is completely and utterly terrifying.

It isn't until they've met up with a few more of Renly and Loras’ friends and have had a few beers that Sansa's able to relax enough to start to try and talk to Margaery.  She can feel herself flushing just looking at Margaery.  She's too pretty and her gaze is too intense, it's making Sansa nervous.

"Your brother rescued me earlier," she says, watching as Renly and Loras lean against each other over the karaoke book, picking as song.  Some off their friends are milling about at the bar, and Sansa’s a little startled to catch sight of the tall woman who’d taken her ID before she’d gone into the opening leaning against the wall in the far corner, her arms folded over her chest and her head bobbing in time with the music that’s playing over the bar’s speakers.  She hadn’t been lying, when she’d said that everywhere Renly went she did, apparently.  "From Joffrey Baratheon."

Margaery wrinkles her nose.  "What were you doing with him?"  she asks, sipping on a vodka cranberry and making a disgusted face.  She throws tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and leans forward to hear Sansa better.

"Having an argument - the same argument - that we've been having since I was seventeen,"  Sansa sighs, she’s been over this so many times that she’s almost sick of telling it. "He doesn't like that I had the gall to break up with him."

"Oh, you poor girl."

And Sansa, who has had two beers at this point and is tipsy enough to not worry about social niceties and what might constitute flirting, leans over and pokes Margaery in the arm.  "If I'm a girl, what does that make you? You can't be much older than me."

She's greeted with an amused smile and Margaery leaning in far too close.  "Older than you," she says, wiggling her eyebrows.  She glances over at the stage and her eyes narrow.  "So help me..." she mutters, scowling darkly.  The comment seems like it’s half to herself.

"What?" Sansa wants to know, because the annoyed amusement is clearly evident in Margaery's voice.

"They like to sing their own songs at karaoke," Margaery explains in a conspiratorial tone. Margaery sips her drink and sighs.  "I think they think themselves terribly clever."  She rolls her eyes and adds, in an undertone, " _Men_."

Sansa perks up, "My dad said they were in a band." She says conversationally.

Margaery laughs, and it's the most beautiful sound that Sansa's heard in ages.

It's then that the DJ started the karaoke track, and Sansa freezes, eyes going wide and alarmed.  Margaery's smile grows wider and Sansa feels a well of panic surge up within her.  No. Way. There was _no way_.

" _Wolfgirl_ is always one of my favorites," Margaery sighs like she’s nostalgic for the song and completely ignoring Sansa’s panic, resting her chin in her hand and fiddling with the straw in her drink. "Do you listen to them at all?"

And Sansa closes her eyes and nods, just once. She pulls her phone out from her lap and moves her fingers easily over the screen, navigating to the browser and clicking to the link to her writing profile.  She listens to Renly and Loras sing her favorite song and stares down at all the new comments on her masterwork for a long time, before she clicks the edit button and marks the story as private.  She sets her phone down on the table and leans in closer to Margaery, feeling alcohol brave and maybe just a little bit foolish.

"They're my favorite band."

  
**Love is a Battlefield** by _wolfgirl23_ is no longer available.


	3. Double Lives

**Renly**

"Does it ever bother you," Loras asks as they lean up against their idling cab, "That your date to these functions always ends up leaving with another woman?"

Renly cracks a small smile, nudging at Loras' shoulder with his own.  They're looking up at the illuminated windows of Sansa Stark's apartment, waiting for Margaery to come back down from escorting Sansa to her door.  "Not particularly," he says at length.  The arrangement he has with Margaery suits both of their purposes nicely, and Margaery has kept their secret without complaint.  She like to tell them that they're good for each other, and Renly wishes that Robert would get out of politics so they could be themselves and not have to hide like this all the time.  "Goodness knows she's getting nothing from this arrangement save a chance to schmooze all the governmental big-wigs whose jobs she's got designs on."

Loras laughs, fiddling with his phone.  He pulls a face, half a second later, and drags his thumb down over the screen.  "I thought you said _Battlefield_ got updated."

Renly blinks, thinking of Margaery's excited whisper about how the conclusion had been fantastic in his ear as they'd danced at the exhibit opening earlier.  He'd been more intrigued by Loras leading Sansa Stark of all people out of a side corridor on his arm like some knight of old than what Margaery had said at the time, but Margaery had shown him the update, he'd pulled it up on his phone...  "It did," he says quickly, pulling out his own phone.  It's still on his browser and Renly is very careful not to do anything to refresh the page.

There's a tapping sound and Brienne, who's sitting in the passenger seat next to their irritable cabbie, rolls down the window.  "The driver wants to know how much longer you think you'll be?"

"Depends on Marg," Loras says, glancing towards the building's door and rather intimidating-looking doorman.  "She seemed quite taken, didn't she?"

Brienne makes a noise that sounds like something between irritation and amusement.  "They were flirting quite a bit, especially once she got over her shock about you two."

Renly looks up from his phone.  He still has Love is a Battlefield pulled up in his browser, so he passes his phone to Loras who makes an excited noise and goes to start reading.  "I think Margaery secretly enjoys telling people and watching their reactions."  He doesn’t mind that secret being told, it's the other one that can't be told.  Margaery has her own, after all.

Loras lets out a quiet guffaw of laughter, "It didn't help that you decided to make sure she knew by giving yourself finger antlers when she asked you point blank if Margaery was having her on."  He shakes his head, "We could have passed ourselves off at really good at covering _Wolfgirl_.  Like, really good."  His eyes flick over Renly's phone screen as he reads.  "This is so tragically beautiful," He turns to Brienne.  "Have you read the _Battlefield_ update?"

Shaking her head, Brienne makes a sound to the negative.  "I still think it's really weird that you read it at all.  It's about you, it's bizarre, whoever wrote that has a deranged mind."

"I think you mean a wonderful mind for history. It isn't about us, Bri, it's about the stag and the rose - Ryan and Tyler.  They're not us; they're totally original, just borrowing our imagery.  Trust me when I say that there's some really gross stuff out there about us, this isn't that.  It's just..." he runs a hand through his hair and Renly rolls his eyes.  Loras is a hopeless romantic at times, "It's beautiful."

"Well," Brienne says, throwing up her hands, "If you say so Loras."

Renly smiles at her, arms folded over his chest.  His tux jacket is discarded with Loras' in the backseat.  It's a warm night, after all, and he'd rather wait outside than in the odd-smelling cab with Brienne judging him and Loras for being into a fan work about their band.  At least Margaery gets it, but she's off probably kissing Sansa Stark goodnight and it's all so impossibly awkward.

Brienne is Renly's bodyguard at Stannis' insistence.  He'd said something along the lines of; 'one of your deranged fangirls could attempt to murder you and that would cause a huge PR nightmare for the prime minister.'  Renly had told him he was completely paranoid and no less than a week later Brienne had been assigned to babysit him and Loras both.

It had, probably, been a miscalculation on Stannis' part, because Brienne is excellent.  He and Loras both enjoy her company, Loras' grandmother likes her and Margaery simply adores her.  She's also fantastic on the drums, which had Stannis in fits for weeks when he'd first found out.  Loras has taught her how to play the bass guitar too, since Renly's absolutely terrible at teaching people to play any instrument that isn't the banjo, apparently.

Renly makes a point of regularly telling Stannis about how great it is to have a third member of their band on the government's dime, just to rankle him when he calls Renly to check on him and complain about how Renly's niece, Shireen, is now obsessed with rosenstag.

"Oh," Loras says a few minutes later, lips twisting downwards into a frown.  "I lost an eyeball."

"Gross."  Renly wrinkles his nose. He thinks it's realistic, frankly, and wolfgirl23 has done a good job with her research.  Frankly, he's a little surprised no one's died, because that would have been the most true-to-life outcome of such a relationship in that historical period. He puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. "Well, eye patches are rather dashing."

Loras makes a humming noise and leans against Renly's shoulder.  "I wonder why they took it down," he muses, thumbing over the chapter and highlighting the whole thing.  He copies it with a swipe of his thumb and pastes it into a notepad document so that they'll have a copy.  "I wish I could comment on it," he says, passing Renly's phone back to him.  Renly pockets it and stands there, nose half-buried in Loras' hair, thinking about the story and how grateful he is that he wasn't born into that time.  He'd never have Loras then, and he loves him so.

He hums a few bars of _Wolfgirl_ into Loras's hair, Loras mumbling the words along with Renly's humming.  "Oh wolfgirl I hope that you'll still be true," He pauses then, turning to look at Renly.  "D'you know, technically, Sansa is a wolf girl. Isn't the old symbol of House Stark a direwolf?"

Renly scratches at his beard, history lessons blurring together in his mind.  "I suppose you're right," he says.  "An actual wolf girl, how odd."

"Explains why Margaery was so smitten," Loras steps away from Renly and peers up at Sasna's apartment building.  "And why she's taking forever."

"They've had more to drink that we have," Renly points out.  "It could just be taking a while, you know how girls are."

Loras wrinkles his nose, "Not really my thing."

"I know, I know."

Margaery emerges some five minutes later, her eyes a little too bright and her lips a little too red.  She's fiddling with her hair as she sidles up to them, a smug, cat-like smile dancing on her lips.  Loras raised an eyebrow at her as he opens the door for her.  "Did you kiss her?"

"Once," Margaery says breezily.  "She's lovely, I must see her again."

-

**Sansa**

Received 3:45 AM: "Why did you take down LiaB? Come on dude, don't hold out on us!!!"

Received 5:46 AM: "I got the notification that you'd updated, but imagine my disappointment to find that the entire story is fucking GONE.  You don't get to do that, you don't get to take a story from your readers like that, fuck you wolfgirl23, fuck you."

Received 7:43 AM: "PUT IT BACK UP."

Received 8:03 AM: "I am greatly saddened that you've chosen to take down Ryan and Tyler's story.  I understand that your reasons are entirely your own, but please know that there are a great many people who are invested in this story, some even in places you really wouldn't expect ;), and would love to read its conclusion.  I hope whatever's troubled you passes soon and that you're able to make the story publicly available."

Received 8:45 AM: "I HOPE YOU REALIZE THAT IT ISN'T THAT HARD TO FIGURE OUT WHO YOU ARE. I WILL DOXX YOU AND FIND YOU AND MAKE YOU GIVE ME THE REST OF THIS STORY."

Received 9:02 AM: "What the actual fuck are some of these comments?  Anyway, WG, you know we love you, take your time and sort your stuff out.  The Internet will still be around when you get back."

-

Sansa clicks listlessly through her email notifications, deleting the more alarming of the messages and knowing, just _knowing_ , that she has to say something or else wild speculation is going to continue.  She's already ventured onto the message board that's been sent up for fanfic on the main rosenstag message board.  There's an entire thread dedicated to discussing Love is a Battlefield and it's positively exploded overnight.

As it is, Sansa's nursing a hangover and replaying the pleasant memory of Margaery Tyrell rising up on her tiptoes and kissing her goodnight, over and over in her head.  It may have happened more than once.  There might have been some tongue.  Sansa feels her ears burn and she buries her head in her hands, groaning long and loud.  She is so beyond screwed.

There is no way that she can tell Renly Baratheon that she's written close to ninety-thousand words of utterly self-indulgent fanfiction about his and Loras' band.  She has no idea how in any of the seven hells she can begin to explain this to the fandom either.  They won't understand such a delicate position, or how utterly conflicted Sansa had felt, letting Margaery kiss her.

It isn't that it isn't welcome; it's just that Sansa isn't sure that she's ready for that plunge yet.  Kissing a girl when she's a little drunk and certainly attracted is one thing.  Kissing a girl when she's stone cold sober and her worlds are colliding in the worst way is something else entirely.  The last time she'd been with a girl had ended so badly that Sansa finds herself pushing the memory of her running from the offer of an actual relationship away before she can truly examine it.  It's been two years now, and Sansa's more comfortable in her own skin then she'd been at the time, but oh god, she'd let Margaery Tyrell kiss her and she'd kissed her back.  She's so screwed.

At the corner of her desk, her phone starts to buzz, and the chorus of _Wolfgirl_ echoes through her bedroom.

_"I see you now wolfgirl,_

_I see you I do…_

_And I can see now what I already knew_

_Though the northlands run deep,_

_they were never enough to contain you."_

She doesn’t recognize the number flashing on the screen, and she debates not answering it.  Someone had threatened to doxx her, after all. It doesn’t seem right to leave it unanswered, after all.  She picks up her phone and tugs the charger's cord from it.  "Hello?"

"Oh good, you're awake."  A warm, friendly-sounding voice comes over the line and Sansa's cheeks, already red at the memory, flush even redder.

"Margaery?" she asks and she's greeted with an affirmative sound deep in the back of Margaery's throat. Sansa frowns, surely she hadn't so drunk that she'd forgotten that she'd given Margaery her phone number.  She closes her eyes and tries to recall the entire night, knowing that there are no blanks in her memory.   Every wonderful, horribly embarrassing moment had truly happened. "How'd you get my number?" she asks, feeling stupid for needing to in the first place.

She's answered with a laugh.  "Your father's secretary was exceptionally accommodating when she heard my grandmother's name," Margaery says breezily. "I wanted to make sure we didn’t leave you too hung over last night."  There's a pause, and Sansa can almost see Margaery's face in her mind's eye, looking a little worried and apprehensive as she adds, "And that you're okay with what happened."

Sansa leans back, staring up at her ceiling and the glow-in-the-dark stars that Arya had helped her to put up when she'd first moved in here, some two years ago now.  "I..." she starts, finding herself grateful that she's alone.  Arya'd left hours ago for her tournament and Sansa's  going to be heading there in short order.  Her father had sent a text a few minutes ago say that Arya had advanced into the semifinals.  She can't think about Arya right now, or what she might say if she'd seen.  No one can know.

Sansa keeps secrets like it's her job, even ones that she knows she shouldn't have to keep.  She swallows, sucking in a deep breath.  Her voice sounds braver than she feels when she speaks. "I don't usually go about kissing near-strangers."

She really doesn't go about kissing anyone these days.  She's been so busy with school and finishing _Love is a Battlefield_ that she hasn't had much time for much else.  If she's honest, she's felt so conflicted about who, exactly, she wishes she could be kissing, that Margaery's charming smile and self-assured manner had swept her right off her feet.

Making a thoughtful sound, a low humming at the back of her throat, Margaery asks, "How about kissing girls?"

It's a question that she hadn't anticipated.  She'd assumed that Margaery saw though the smokescreen of disinterest that Sansa has tried so hard to perpetuate. Maybe Sansa's poker face is better than Jon or Arya tell her it is.  She shifts forward, deleting another angry message about her story.  There's no harm in admitting it, that it'd been wonderful, the parts that hadn't been disastrous.  "I have..." she says, adding a clarifying, "Before," when she realizes how vaguely evasive it sounds.

"And boys?"

"Joffrey answered that question for me, but please, no one knows."  She can’t talk about it to anyone because she’ll have put a label on herself then, and none of them really fit.  They wouldn’t understand her hesitancy, nor her unwillingness to box herself in. 

There's a smile in Margaery's voice when she speaks, and Sansa can see it clearly in her mind. "I shan't breathe a word."

"Thank you..." Sansa knows that she shouldn't ask, but she feels like they're sharing a secret now, and the words just sort of tumble from her mouth without bidding. "Does your brother know about you?"

Margaery laughs.  "Loras?  The only reason I spend any time with them at all these days is because they can't go to functions together, Stannis Baratheon won't allow it and goodness knows we're all impossibly busy these days."

Everything freezes, and Sansa thinks she can hear a ringing in her ears.  She'd been right, holy shit, she'd been right. She hadn't been reading into subtext like Arya kept insisting that she had been for years now.  The realization is enough to make her start to talk, quickly, rapidly, not quite following the line of her thinking until she realizes that she's saying. "Renly is... oh my god."

"What?"

"I guess I would have never thought," Sansa hedges, wishing she hadn't said anything at all.  She leans back in her uncomfortable desk chair.  "My sister's in the national fencing tournament finals," she adds, pulling a string of something distracting and certainly not Renly Baratheon's sex life (which, as it happens, she's coming to realize she has spent entirely too long thinking about as it is). "The matches start at one..." she bites her lip, wondering if maybe this is too much.  Her dad is there, after all, and probably Jon and his weirdo girlfriend.  She doesn't think Bran or Rickon are well enough to make the trip, if her mother's email (the only one she's bothered to respond to all morning) is anything to go by.  She's under instruction to take video of Arya's matches.

"Why Sansa, are you asking me to be your date?"

It isn't that, really, it's just that Sansa wants to see her again.  When she's sober, because she wants to know if it was all just a stupid, drunken thing, or if this is something that she actually wants.  The anxiety of knowing that even debating it is just making it more and more obvious that it is exactly what she was is almost overpowering.  She's not exactly good at lying to herself.

"I um... maybe?"  She hesitates, and then adds, "If you're not busy?"

"I'll come get you, if that's okay?"

"That'd be wonderful."

And Sansa Stark certainly does not sigh happily when she hangs up her phone and shuts down her computer.

-

Margaery appears at her door at twelve-fifteen bearing an obnoxiously large umbrella.  Her sandals are absolutely soaked as she leans the umbrella against the wall outside Sansa's apartment door and she squelches into the apartment when Sansa opens door.

"I take it's still raining?"  Sansa asks with a raised eyebrow.

"No, It’s definitely progressed passed a simple rain and into a monsoon," Margaery laughs, squelching a little bit as she stands on Sansa’s doormat and squeezes water from her hair.  "I haven't seen rains like this outside of the Reach in years."

Sansa shrugs, rain is something that she’s used to, after all.  Most northerners are. When it isn’t snowing on the moors, it’s raining and raining steadily.  "I'm more used to snow, honestly."  There’s a moment when she wonders if maybe she’s being too… she doesn’t even know, snotty maybe?  She knows who the Tyrells are, naturally, their matriarch is a truly terrifying woman that Sansa’s met once before.  She knows that people here, in King’s Landing, and places like the Reach are not used to snow at all and she’s always found southorner’s reactions to the snow to be absolutely hilarious. 

Margaery leans in, all toothy smile and shining eyes and catches Sansa’s hand within her own.  "It's no wonder _Wolfgirl_ is your favorite song, is it?" she rocks back on squelchy heels.  "It could be about you."

In that moment, Sansa says something that she regrets as soon as she says it, but it just sort of comes out.  Margaery puts her at ease in some ways, but makes Sansa impossibly nervous and just a little giggly in many others.  "I've been using _‘Wolfgirl’_ as a username online for years now - Starks, you know?"

"I do," Margaery nods.  She looks pensive for a moment, tapping her chin.  Her feet squelch on the floor and she takes half a step toward Sansa.  "Sansa, when you mentioned that rosenstag was your favorite band, do you do any um... Internet stuff?"

"Of course not." She says it a little too quickly, and she looks down when she says it.  It is obvious then, to anyone with eyes, that she's lying through her teeth.  She can tell by the way that Margaery's eyes narrow that she's probably put the _Wolfgirl_ comment together with a non-admission about her online activities.

Why can't she just go to watch Arya fight with swords with Margaery?  Why does her stupid story have to make this all so complicated?  All she wants to do is see if whatever had transpired between them could happen again, and if she wanted it to.  She wants to _know_ Margaery; she wants to understand how she works.

"Would it matter if I did?" she asks, wincing when she looks up to meet Margaery's gaze.

Margaery shrugs.  "Not really," she looks a little guilty when she adds.  "I keep an eye on the message boards, make sure that no one's getting to close to the truth, you know?  There's this story that's been coming out and I did a stupid thing and linked it to Loras."

Sansa closes her eyes and wishes for a quiet, painless death.  "Please tell me that they never actually read it," she breathes.  "Please."

“Oh…” Margaery says.  “Oh my… _You_ wrote it.”

Raising a hand up to rub at the back of her neck, Sansa flushes.  Her cheeks are almost as red as her hair, she’s sure.  “Maybe,” she says, looking away, her hand still caught up on the nape of her neck.  It is not that she wants to deny it, but more that she wants to delay the inevitable.  Margaery is clearly up on the bandom, to some extent, she’d figure it out eventually.   It was like taking a bandaid off, best do it all at once and not prolong the pain.  Or the embarrassment, in this case.

Margaery marches up to Sansa and pokes her in the shoulder.  “Put it back up!” she demands.  She looks a bit sheepish, and Sansa is struck by how completely and utterly taken she is with Margaery.  This isn’t like before, when it had felt like too much, a kiss at a party turned into several and the expectation of a relationship that Sansa hadn’t wanted. No, this feels good, it feels organic and it warms Sansa’s heart in a way that she had never expected.  “It’s brilliant.”

And Sansa’s cheeks burn red for a reason entirely different from her own embarrassment over what she’d written about Margaery’s brother and her father’s best friend’s youngest brother.  She looks down at Margaery’s expectant face and her demanding finger.  “Do you really think so?”

A nod.  “I do,” she says. 

There’s something about that the way that Margaery’s looking at her that makes Sansa feel at ease enough to confirm that she had.  She tells Margaery about her writing process and how she’d gotten the idea for _Love is a Battlefield_ in the first place (Arya had been on a Seven Kingdoms kick and had spent entirely too much time telling Sansa about the historical figures and the war and how their family fit into the whole thing). 

“So you wrote it for your little sister?” Margaery clarifies as they slip into the stands next to Jon and his weird red-headed girlfriend some forty-five minutes later.  Her expression is serious, her eyes fixed on Sansa’s face.

Jon is apparently trying to grow a beard and it looks hideous. Barely suppressing a giggle at his half-assed mustache, Sansa smiles politely at him and then turns her full attention back to Margaery.  It isn’t like Arya’s even up right now, she can get away with being a little rude.  “Sort of,” she confesses.  “I had actually written a paper on historical queer relationships for my Sexual History of Westeros class and it sort of… took on a life of its own.”

Margaery tilts her head towards Sansa.  “That was a fun class, wasn’t it?  Professor Lannister was excellent.”

“He really was,” Sansa agrees, not wanting to go into the fact that he’d always been an absolute gentleman to her when she’d gone to see him with questions about her research, despite coming off as a total letch to the rest of the class.  She’d never explicitly told him _what_ she was writing, but she got a sense that a guy who boasted that he’d made the ‘historical eight’ one day at the beginning of class before launching into a lecture about women’s rights and the development of early feminist movements in King’s Landing and in other larger cities throughout Westeros wasn’t really in any position to judge her for her inspiration. 

Smiling at Margaery, Sansa turns her attention back to the arena floor.  She’s halfway to cursing herself forgetting that Margaery was still at university, just a year ahead of her.  They’d discussed it the previous evening at length, listening to Renly and Loras sing and then demanding that they buy them drinks afterward.  Margaery just seems so much more _worldly_.  

Glancing past Margaery’s smiling face, she can see Jon and his odd girlfriend looking at them oddly.  “Oh!” Sansa covers, pretending like she hadn’t been very pointedly ignoring Jon and his terrible mustache.  “Jon, Ygritte, this is Margaery Tyrell, Margaery, this is my cousin Jon and his girlfriend.”

They exchange pleasantries and soon Margaery’s fingers are curled around Sansa’s as Arya sizes up her truly gigantic opponent.  There are stories written about such battles, stories that Sansa has read many times over to Arya when she was little and Sansa was just learning how to read.  Arya fights like a demon, and the whoop of joy that escapes Sansa’s lips when Arya’s foil hits home and scores her the winning point is enough to drive all the panic from her mind over the story and Margaery and how the in the seven hells she’s ever going to explain it to fans of the story.

That comes later, with Arya flipped on her bed, beer on one hand and championship cup in the other.  Sansa’s curled in her uncomfortable desk chair, staring at the author’s note that she’s written out and is contemplating putting up with the story.

“I still think that you should just tell them that you met the band and you feel super weirded out to have your story up there,” Arya says, rolling into her side and regarding Sansa with a critical gaze.  “Renly Baratheon… who would have thought…”

“I can’t just say that,” Sansa replies, correcting a typo and moving her cursor over.  “They’re obviously under instructions to keep their identities secret because of why Renly’s brother is.” 

“The way dad talks, he’ll be out of a job soon enough,” Arya mumbles, drinking her beer.  “Still don’t see why you can’t just tell them.”

“Because then they’d want to know more!  And I can’t tell them more!  I can’t say oh yes, my father is Eddard Stark and he’s the PM’s leading advisor and this one night he asked me to some hoity-toity to do and somehow I managed to run into my horrible little shit of an ex-boyfriend and befriend Loras Tyrell.  Who, it turns out, is the rose in rosenstag.”  She’s getting increasingly more and more hysterical and Arya’s just laughing.

Arya might also be a little shit.

“You know,” Arya says, rolling over. “I just got that joke.”

“What joke?”

“The rosenstag one.  The old symbol for house Baratheon is a stag, right? And the Tyrells are flower people in _every_ sense of the word if your new friend Margaery is anything to go by.”  She frowns.  “I think it said in my history text that the Tyrells were roses.”

“They were,” Sansa replies.  That had hit her as soon as she’d seen Renly and Loras sing _Wolfgirl_. She’d asked Margaery, who’d shrugged and leaned in closer, smiling prettily and asking Sansa questions about school and what she’s studying.  Margaery is studying politics and women’s studies, and Sansa’s a little jealous that she gets to take more than one class with Professor Lannister.

“And they’re like, actually gay?”

“I guess so.”

“That is so weird.  You might have the best gaydar ever, San.”

_-_

_Love is a Battlefield –_ Author’s note: So sorry for taking this down guys, something’s come up in real life that made me want to have this story not be searchable for a while.  I’m putting it up now at the behest of some super excellent people (you know who you are) but be advised that I'll be putting on private again in about a week.  --WG23


	4. The Offer

**Sansa**

**Received 3:45 AM:**   It's been three weeks since you took down LiaB and I'm starting to get genuinely concerned that you will never put it back up online for all of us to read.  What on earth could be so horrible in your life that you want to deny us such a wonderful story? Your words are brilliant and I hope you realize that you’re only hurting your fans by denying us the beauty in your words.  You're selfish for doing so, wolfgirl23, I hope you know that..

 **Received 10:23 AM:** Every day I hold out hope that you'll decide to put _Love is a Battlefield_ back up for all the world to see.  The only thing I can think of is that you have a publishing deal in the works.  I wish that you'd confirm that, though, so we know.  I'm sure many of us would buy the book if you simply *told* us that you were planning on doing that.  Basically disappearing from the Internet as a whole for three weeks after your massive over-reaction/flip out is ridiculous.

-

"You know," Margaery says, curling into Sansa's shoulder as Sansa glares through the twilight gloom at her email app on her phone.  She hates this, and she hates that she cannot, in good conscience, turn off the messaging feature on the forums website.  She has friends online, friends that she doesn’t want to lose over this stupid story and the apparent bomb that Sansa had set off in taking it down.  "I don't think I've ever met a more demanding, self-involved group of people in my life." Margaery reaches up, fingers closing around Sansa's phone and pushing it down to rest on Sansa's stomach.  "You don't owe them anything."

"I feel like I owe them more of an explanation than I gave them," Sansa mumbles dejectedly.  She hasn’t had anything more to say though, and the messages go long-unanswered.

This has become a familiar conversation over the past few weeks, as Margaery's presence in Sansa's apartment had become more and more frequent.  Margaery theoretically lives with a bunch of her cousins in a big house in one of King's Landing's oldest neighborhoods, but she’s hardly ever there.  She tells Sansa that she and her cousins are very close, they are impossibly noisy and Sansa suspects that Margaery appreciates the quiet of Sansa's apartment.  Exams are coming up and Margaery's in her fourth year, her thesis is due soon and she's been working on it in every spare moment she can scrape from her busy social and academic calendar. 

Even still, she’s found time to foster this… whatever that exists between them.  Sansa isn’t sure that they’re dating, or even if she wants them to be.  She likes Margaery, she likes kissing her and she loves how easily things come with her.  She’s everything Sansa’s probably ever wanted in a companion.  She understands the need for silence that Sansa feels, but knows when to break it just as easily. 

Theirs is an easy companionship.  They go out with Renly and Loras occasionally; they linger too late in the dark of doorways, kissing in the light of streetlamps.  Loras calls them ‘streetlight people’ for that reason, and Sansa’s so impossibly happy that she’s found someone who’s changed everything about her mundane university experience up to this point.  She wants this to be something.  She desperately wants to, but the conversation always turns, it always flits away before Sansa can find the courage to spit the words out.  She knows Margaery would say yes, it’s the asking that’s proving impossible.

"You could always take your father up on his offer and actually speak to his publisher friend..." Margaery suggests.  "Or ask Professor Lannister, I'm sure he knows people as well, if you don't want to use your father's name to get you a favor."

Sansa rolls her eyes at the mention of her Sexual History of Westeros professor.  "Yes, I'm just going to tell the biggest letch in all of King's Landing that I used his class as a springboard to write a story about two gay guys during the War of Five Kings.” Sighing, Sansa turns to set her phone on her bedside table. She leans over the side of the bed to retrieve her charger cord.  "He'd probably ask for details on the good bits," she adds once she’s upright again.

Margaery laughs then, throwing her head back on Sansa's pillow, her hair spilling out around her head like a halo of brown against stark white.  She’s so beautiful in that moment that Sansa’s breath catches and she finds herself staring, quite unable to look away from Margaery’s smiling face and the warm feeling that surges up within her as she looks at Margaery and catches herself thinking: _I did that. I made her laugh like that._

Still, it’s probably not the best way to transition away from hysterical giggles, so Sansa pretends to pout; nudging Margaery in the side with her elbow.  It just makes Margaery laugh harder.  "Can you imagine?" Sansa adds.  She’s unable to resist it now that she’s got Margaery going.  She straightens, trying to look serious and putting on a poor imitation of Professor Lannister's Casterly Rock accent.  "Why, Miss Stark, I had no idea you were even interested in men after your unfortunate entanglement with my nephew.  Goodness knows, I would swear off men if I ever had to date him."

Giggling, Margaery nudges Sansa back.  Her eyebrows are furrowed together, when Sansa looks up at her face and her expression seems suddenly serious. "You don't have to say things like that, Sansa. I know that it can be hard..." Her lips turn down and her fingers gather in Sansa's thin nightshirt.  The nights have turned warm now and if Margaery wasn’t here, Sansa probably would forgo a shirt altogether. .  "To figure yourself out. I don't want you to rush into something just because you think it will make me happy."

Rolling onto her side, Sansa props herself up on her elbow and regards Margaery.  "I've already had that freak out, Marg."

"Oh yes, the Dornish girl from first year," Margaery sighs and pulls her hand back, running distracted fingers through her hair.  She seems uncomfortable with the way that the conversation’s turned, but she was the one who turned it.  As Arya would surely point out in such a situation, it’s her fault she’s uncomfortable and feeling awkward. "I just... I don't want you to say you're something that you're not."

"I'm not saying I am anything," Sansa replies, shaking her head at the thought that she was trying to box herself in for Margaery.  She would never willingly do something like that unless she was sure, _damn_ sure.  And she’d thought Margaery knew that.  "But I'm pretty sure I'm not as keen on boys as I liked to tell myself at age seventeen."

"Men have two purposes," Margaery says.  Her elbow is up in the air, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on Sansa's ceiling through the shield of her fingers.  She looks like one of the great masterworks at the National Gallery, laid out like she's about to have a fainting spell.  Sansa wants to kiss her. "To keep up appearances and making babies, but with the way technology is advancing, I'm sure that their role in reproduction will be minimized soon enough."  She turns, a smile pulling at her lips. "You, darling, can be whomever you want to be.  But know that you're a good writer and you don't owe the Internet trolls anything."

They lapse into a silence for a few minutes, Margaery's fingers buried in Sansa's hair and Sansa's breathing slow, steady, coming in even pulls, her fingers curled up in the fabric of Margaery’s shirt.  She could fall asleep like this and a part of her wants to.  They haven’t slept together yet, but there’s been a lot of this: dozing on Sansa’s bed when they bother had other, pressing matters to attend to.  Neither of them, it seemed, wanted to let the other go.

"Did I tell you that Renly and Loras are opening for Dany Targaryen when she plays here?"  Margaery asks, apparently apropos of nothing.  She's braiding a few strands of Sansa's hair, distractedly humming to herself.  "He mentioned something about a surprise, too, are you going to the show?"

Sansa sighs, turning to stare up at the ceiling.  Margaery's fingers don't leave her hair, but she makes an annoyed noise at the back of her throat and adjusts herself so she can keep the braid going.  This is harder than Sansa had initially thought, and her confession is sort of a bad one.  She feels her ears start to burn as she tries to articulate her point.  She swallows. "This is really embarrassing."

"More embarrassing than nearly a hundred thousand words about my brother and his boyfriend?"

"Oh _come on_ , Marg," Sansa grumbles, elbowing her in the side. She turns to meet curious brown eyes and adds, a little sheepishly. "And yes, way more embarrassing."

Margaery's fingers tangle in in the hair that she's braided, pulling the interlocking strands loose and leaning in.  She presses her lips against Sansa's cheek, sliding, almost messily, to land on the corner of Sansa's mouth.  "It cannot be _that_ bad," she says, rising up on her elbow and kissing Sansa full on the mouth.

Time seems to stretch when they get like this, and gods, Sansa loves it.  This so much easier than it had ever been before.  Joffrey was only ever interested in how dating her made him look, and it had been hard for Sansa to reconcile that with her own wants from that doomed relationship.  Margaery is easy, she's steady.  She doesn't push Sansa and she respects (and thinks her love of rosenstag is hilarious) Sansa's creative endeavors.

"I've erm - never actually seen rosenstag perform," Sansa confesses when Margaery pulls away, her head dipping to press a kiss to the place where her jaw gave way into her ear.  "Outside of that karaoke when we first met."

Margaery stills, sits up.  She brushes her hair from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear with nimble fingers.  "Really?  That _is_ embarrassing."  
  
"Oh, come on, Marg, it isn't horrible, I just have never had a chance to see them," Sansa protests. She twists her fingers into her hair, tugging the braid that Margaery's put there halfway out before she realizes what she's doing. She smiles, just a little sheepishly up at Margaery, who moves to redo it.  Margaery loves to play with her hair, but Sansa’s never really been able to figure out why.  She’s told Sansa it’s because it’s red and it’s straight and it feels good.  Surely though, by now, Margaery must know that Sansa likes it when her hair’s played with.  It must be why she keeps doing it. "I am a starving student, after all."  
  
"I'm sure," Margaery drawls in reply. Her cheek appears to hollow as she worries on the inside of her cheek, a habit that Sansa's noticed she has when she's thinking. She regards Sansa with solemn eyes for a moment before reaching forward and taking Sansa's hands in her own. "You must come with me then."  Her tone is so earnest that it’s almost alarming to Sansa.  
  
Warily, Sansa lets her fingers twist around Margaery's. She is warm, almost hot to the touch, and her cheeks are flushed with excitement. "You have tickets?" She bites her lip. "Dany Targaryen is sort of a big deal."  
  
"Loras is my brother," Margaery shrugs. "I'm pretty sure he could get me into the award shows if I asked nicely."  
  
"Then..." Sansa feels the excitement coil at the pit of her stomach. "Yes. Yes I'll go."

-

 **Received 2:14 PM:**   I haven't been paying much attention to this website recently, but I have noticed that you're getting a ton of flack for what is ultimately a very personal decision.  I respect you, do what you need to do.

Sansa's father calls her out of the blue when she's leaving her comparative political philosophy seminar.  Her phone is on silent, the only reason she'd even noticed him calling at all was because she'd gotten a text from Margaery in class and the professor (a truly terrifying and slightly creepy older guy who always stood too close and always looked a little too long at his favorites) wasn't the sort of guy who would let something like that fly.  She’d wanted to answer it under the desk, but the question had been complicated and after a few typo-laden false-starts, Sansa had decided to simply text Margaery back after class.

Now though, her father was calling and she’s distracted yet again.  Margaery is never going to get an answer to her question. 

"I have someone I want you to meet," Ned Stark says to her when Sansa answers his call.  "Can you come to my office?"

His office is up by the Red Keep, and Sansa hates walking up there.  It takes too long and on a rainy day like this, it's about the last thing that she wants to do.  Plus, she's wearing horrible shoes for it.  The streets up by the keep are still cobbled, to keep up the historical element of the area.

"I have horrible shoes on," Sansa replies.  "You'll have to wait for me to get the bus."

"That's fine, sweetie, I think we'll be busy for a while anyway," Her dad answers and Sansa lets him go after a quick goodbye.  She can't help but think that she knows exactly what this about and a knot of nervousness curls at the pit of her stomach just thinking about it.  She'd gotten brave, a few days ago, Margaery sitting on her sofa half-buried in thesis research but still smiling encouragingly as she texted her dad and asked if he knew any publishers. He'd said he'd look into it and Margaery had let out an excited shriek and tackled Sansa into a bear hug at Sansa’s explanation once she’d hung up the phone.

Sansa has been doing a lot of things that could be construed as brave recently.  She'd had a few drinks with Renly and Loras at another open mic night about a week and a half ago.  Loras had just gotten back from a botany conference in Highgarden and had shyly presented her with a beautiful little succulent houseplant that Margaery had started to coo over almost instantly.  "It'll do great in your kitchen window," she'd explained excitedly as Loras passed Sansa a handwritten care sheet. His handwriting was almost the complete opposite of Margaery’s, Sansa noticed, and curled where Margaery’s was mostly straight hard lines. "My grandmother has these all over her office!"

"Oh, it's from grandmother," Loras had clarified with a wink at Renly who’d raised two impressed eyebrows nearly to his hairline.  "Her big plant at home had a bunch of seedlings sprout so sent me home with some and specific instructions to 'Give that Stark Girl one.'" He'd shrugged.  "Guess you made an impression." He added to Sansa.

"I um…” Sansa faltered, not knowing if she maybe she _had_ met the Tyrell matriarch at one point and was simply forgetting it. She’s pretty sure that she would remember meeting the Lady Tyrell. “I haven't even met her."

"Oh Marg…"  Loras had eyed his sister. "Did you do that gushing thing you do about people you like because grandmother lets you get away with it?"

Margaery had bit her lip sheepishly.  "No..."  she'd looked away, her cheeks coloring bright pink in the low light of the bar.  "Maybe." she'd added sheepishly and they'd all burst out laughing.

What goes unmentioned between all of them, as it usually does, is that Margaery's grandmother could very easily run the country if Renly's brother wasn't already doing such a spectacular job mucking it up.  There's talk of the Lannister faction calling for elections and they're all ignoring it because they don't want to think about it.  The government in King's Landing is balanced on a knife's edge as it is; unrest within the ruling party is certainly not what anyone wants.

She had been filled with bravado, and flattered at Loras' gift.  A drink later and the conversation had turned towards music and Sansa had blurted her secret.  Her fingers had curled around Margaery's under the table and she'd looked Renly Baratheon right in the eye and had informed him that she was the one who'd written that story that he and Loras liked so much.  The proud smile that had tugged at the corners of Margaery's lips had made it worth it, as had Loras' reaction.  Renly had been quiet at first, but later, after they'd all drunkenly sang a cover of some terrible pop group's one hit wonder, he'd confessed how grateful he was that she'd written the story at all.

"Not about the band, that's secondary, but about the idea of a relationship like that during that time," he'd explained, hands pressed together around a dewing beer.  "I was obsessed with the War of Five Kings when I was a kid, but even then I knew I was ... I won't say gay, because that came later, but different.  The idea of there being a story out there about people like me -- like us."

It was by far the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to Sansa about her writing and she'd been sorely tempted to hug Renly for his comment.  She hadn't, and had instead smiled a little tipsily at him and asked him what bits he'd liked best and if he thought it was weird that she'd written the story at all.

Now though, as she walks though the university's twists and turns towards the off-campus bus stop, Sansa cannot shake the feeling that something huge is about to happen  -  and she isn’t sure if it will be good or bad.  It flutters about in her heart like nervous energy and she can scarcely keep the smile from her face the entire bus ride up to the government district and the Red Keep.

They let her into the PM's office space with minimal fuss, she's been something of a regular fixture in her father’s office since she started at university some three years ago.  She nods to her father's secretary and slips through the door without asking to be seen in.  She doesn’t ever need to knock, her father had told her once upon a time, and if anyone made her to just go around them.  His door was _always_ open to her. 

Inside the office, her father is sitting behind his imposing oak desk.  Across from him is a woman with deep red hair that Sansa doesn’t recognize. Beside her is Stannis Baratheon, writing in notes on whatever it is that they’re talking about onto a legal pad.

"Sansa!" Stannis says, getting to his feet and moving to shake her hand. Sansa is struck by the differences between all three of the Baratheon brothers: Robert who is loud and boisterous, Renly who positively oozes an excess of creative energy, and Stannis, who is far too serious.  A smile is pulling at the corners of his lips, though, and his whole face changes from a harassed-looking politician to a kindly, almost fatherly man. "It's lovely to see you again."

She smiles politely at him, shaking his hands and letting him get a good look at her.

"I think you grew again," he adds, eyeing her height next to his own.

"Impossible," Sansa jokes lamely. She's always been a little uncomfortable about her height, given that she’s so much taller than any of the girls she knows – not to mention more than just a handful of the girls.  "I stopped when I was fifteen."

"Nonsense," Her father calls from behind his desk.  He’s half hidden behind a paper that the red-haired woman has passed him now.  "You stopped when you were eighteen and not a minute before.  It's all that Tulley blood in you."

Sansa is taller than her mother by at least two inches and rolls her eyes at this comment.  She’s really the only one of her siblings that takes after her mother at all.  Arya is all Stark, as are Bran and Rickon.  Robb is a good mix, but he's got his own issues to deal with.  "Or it could be that grandfather was tall."

"Doesn't explain Arya." Her father grunts in reply, falling easily into the old Stark family joke.

Arya, who is all of five two, is an anomaly in their fairly average-height family.  "She's perfectly content to be short and angry about it until the end of her days, father.  We've established this."

Stannis and the unknown woman laugh, and it’s a strange sound from both of them.  They’d both seemed so very, very serious before.  Sansa gets a better look at her then, and she recognizes her from some appearances that Stannis has made in public.  Stannis' wife had died about two years ago of cancer, if Sansa recalls it correctly, and he’s made it very clear to the press that he and this woman were merely friends and coworkers.  She was a cultural minister of some sort, Sansa thinks. She never could keep all of those straight in her head.

"Oh, right.  Sansa, this is Melisandre - she wanted to hear about your story and maybe talk to you about publishing it."

"Really?"

"Well, I was going to call your mother’s friend Petyr, but she didn't think it was a good idea for you two to spend that much time together so..." Stannis winces and Sansa can see Melisandre's eyes go wide for a moment before they narrow.  Sansa thinks it’s the way that her father’s said it that makes the publisher’s eyes look suddenly so concerned but she honestly doesn’t blame him.  Avoiding Littlefinger had become something of a habit after she’d come of age, ad she’s grateful that her father seems to understand that.

"Littlefinger's publishing operation is small-time, I may have given up my position to work for the government, but my company is much larger than that.  Sansa, I would need to look at your work, but I'm sure it's sound or else I wouldn't have heard about it from more than just your father."

"Who?"

"Oh, I can't reveal my sources." Her painted red lips twitch up into a small smile.  She gets to her feet and pulls a card out from somewhere in her dress and passes it to Sansa.  "Give me a call when you're ready to talk about maybe signing a contract.."  She clasps Sansa's hand and adds a traditional blessing for those who follow the Lord of Light and Sansa, who has never been particularly religious, smiles and nods.

"She's always a bit intense," Ned Stark says when Melisandre disappears out the door to leave her alone with her father and Stannis.  "But she's heard of your story, Sansa.  Someone's told her about it and it wasn't me."  He nods to the business card clutched in Sansa's hand.  "I'd call her."

"I will."  It's a promise she knows she's going to keep.

"Now, what's this Stannis tells me about you spending a lot of time with Renly and the Tyrells?"  She frowns, she'd brought Margaery to Arya's tournament and that had been totally okay.  "Don't frown, Sansa, there's nothing wrong, it's just that you've been so alone since you started school, I wanted to say that I'm happy for you."

She brightens.  "Thanks dad."

-

**Renly**

"Is Dany really down for it?" Loras is excited, so excited that he's talking about a mile a minute to Brienne, who has a placating smile on her face but clearly is more interested in Renly's response.  They're standing in the middle of the stage that they're going to be preforming on come the weekend, sweaty and exhausted after a long practice.  "Because that's a lot to ask her - and it'll ruin her act."

Renly chuckles, scratching at his beard and winking at Brienne.  She rolls her eyes at him in response.  "The single is dropping tomorrow, Loras,” Renly says, “People will know by the weekend what's going on.  I figured we could end with it."

'It' is the song that Loras has spent the better part of the past month holed up in their apartment writing.  Loras is still hopeless on the banjo, and Renly's had to work more than usual, following Stannis and Robert around like a shadow.  He's watching and learning, but he knows that this really isn't for him. Not with the government going downhill as quickly as it's going right now.  There's talk of a call for elections, and that's the last thing Renly wants to deal with.

Truth be told, Renly was still reeling a bit for the revelation that the girl that he'd met when she was all of thirteen was the creative voice behind one of the best pieces of historical fiction he'd ever read.  Sansa had told them with Margaery leaning against her back one evening over drinks some three weeks ago.  She'd faltered, flushed as red as her hair, but the story had come out none the same.  Loras had hugged her and told her it was beautiful - Renly had held back.  He hadn't known how to tell her what exactly it had meant to him to read a such a well-researched story about queer people in a time when all historical readings seemed to indicate that such love was punishable by death.

Representation mattered, he remembered that from school, and now he thought he truly understood what that had meant.

"Do you think Sansa will like it?"  Loras asks, fidgeting with his keyboard and pressing a high C over and over again until Brienne reached over and swatted his hand away from the key.

She looked at them; close cropped hair sticking to her forehead after their practice under the lights.  "I'm sure she will, but I have to stress to you both, again, that I think it's a bad idea to create something based on a fan-work.  She could cry copyright violation.  The fans could revolt."

The last bit was said so lamely that they all threw back their heads and laughed.  They'd already posted some sneak peeks of the song on their website and there was already wild speculation that this song was the reason that Wolfgirl23 had taken down _Love is a Battlefield_.  Margaery had taken to sending daily emails with some of the more hilarious forums posts that she'd found to Loras, who shared them with the rest of them.

As far as they knew, though, Sansa had no idea about the song.  The backlash from her taking down the story and her subsequent realization as to who the members of rosenstag truly were had been enough (according to Margaery anyway) to keep her off of the message boards entirely.  If she had been on, she'd given no indication to Margaery that she'd heard any of the preview clips.

"I think she will," Renly agrees.  They'd asked Dany Targaryen to play the guitar for the song and to harmonize on the chorus.  She'd agreed to, as Loras was going to be doing the radio mix of her newest single - which was truly excellent on its own, but entirely too long for radio.  He adds, mostly for Brienne's benefit as she hadn't been there for the conversation between Loras and his sister. "Margaery said that her dad found her a publisher."

When Sansa had told them about her writing process for Love is a Battlefield, she'd explained that her younger sister and father had also read the story.  Renly had paled at that mention, for Ned Stark knew rosenstag's secret, but she'd gone on to say that she was giving him a version of the story that didn't include the obvious references to the stag and the rose.  "He was a little weirded out by the historical queer characters, but I told him that I'd gotten the idea in Professor Lannister's class on the Sexual History of Westeros and he seemed to... I dunno, get it after that."

Renly had suffered through Loras taking that class, so he understood, for the most part, why it had earned a smile and a nod from Ned Stark and nothing more. "But hey," Renly had said, biting back all of what he wanted to say to Sansa.  He'd wanted to thank her from the bottom of his heart, for creating something so beautiful.  He'd wanted to tell her to share it with the world because everyone who'd grown up like him needed a queer hero to look up to.  "You wrote something beautiful."

She'd flushed again, and had smiled at him.  Margaery had leaned forward to press a kiss to her cheek.  "I guess I did," she'd said.  "I guess I did."

Brienne's face lights up and pulls Renly from his thoughts.  "Really?" Even if she disapproves of the manner in which Love is a Battlefield was created, she does love the story.  "That's excellent news."

They run though the set list one more time, trying a few variations on cords in places.  They end with the new song, Loras fiddling with his keyboard until he can get it to play back the guitar that they don't have presently as Dany isn't even in King's Landing yet.

_"I met you in a rose garden_

_caught by the sunlight in our hair._

_One white rose you gave to Me_

_and the promise of eternity._

_We were destined, you and I."_

 


	5. Into the Rose Garden

“So what, you’re just going to take it offline completely?”  Arya is halfway through her dinner and is eating as grossly as she can possibly arrange in front of the webcam for Sansa’s benefit.  Distance, it seems, has made the heart grow ever-fonder, and the two of them have a standing Tuesday evening video call, because, like it or not, Sansa misses Arya’s face. That’s about it on most days, but today she’s found herself actually craving Arya’s opinion on all that’s going on in her life and she thinks it’s probably because Arya hasn’t matured past the age of five despite their mother’s best efforts and she always speaks her mind.  Sansa remembers back when they were both in secondary school for that one year together and how many times she’d have to collect Arya from the headmaster’s office for ‘stating her mind’ too well to a teacher. 

Sansa sips her tea and sighs.  She doesn’t really want to take it down, or even to disturb it at all, but she knows that she has to do _something_ at this point.  The messages are starting to pile up and everyone from the publisher herself down to some of the commenters themselves have pointed out that if Sansa were to just make a post explaining why she took it down that it would all get a lot easier on her.  As it is, she’s taken to shutting all of her electronics down at night as she’s afraid that that threat of doxxing is still very real and she’s not sure what she’d do if they ever found out who she is or who her father is.

“I think I want to post a message saying that yes, I took it down because I’d been approached by a publisher and I was working out my options,” she takes a long time then, fiddling with her phone, smiling almost fondly at a message from Margaery telling her that she’d be running late – she had to go back to her’s to feed her cat before coming over for their shared study session.

Exams are fast approaching and the last thing that Sansa needs in her life is more stress.  She’s resolved to get this sorted before she starts to adhere to the patented Margaery-Tyrell-Gets-Great-Marks revision and cramming method that Margaery has sold to her like snake oil.  Besides, Margaery’s taken Professor Lannister’s class before and has something of an idea of how horrible his tests can be.  Sansa wants to pick her brain once she has the mental space to cope with it again. 

Arya eats piece of chicken with a relish.  “That sounds reasonable, so why are you hemming and hawing, Sans, this is great.  You said that Renly and Loras both love the story – and you’ve got a decent offer.  Why don’t you accept?”

“I don’t know…”  Sansa bites her lip.  “Do you think it feels somehow dishonest to change a story around and sell it as original?”

“I think it’s no weirder than writing nearly two hundred pages about two fictionally gay musicians and then surprise!” Arya throws her hands up in the air for emphasis. “They turn out to be actually hella gay and super closeted in real life, and you finally decide to pull your head out of your ass regarding your sexuality and start boning one of said musician’s hot sister.”

“Arya!” Sansa is flushed crimson, her face half-hidden behind her hands at the scathing accuracy of the statement.  “You’re so lucky she’s not here – she’d _never_ let me hear the end of it.”

Arya chews thoughtfully.  “Because she totally knows that you blush like it’s your job, are still super innocent and generally fantastically easy to tease.  I gotta spend more time with her.  I have so many _things_ I could teach her.”

“Seven help us all,” Sansa says, sticking out her tongue at Arya.  Arya returns the gesture and Sansa is reminded of three things in very short order: one, Arya is eating and that is super gross, two, Arya is five years old and three, she should never have even imagined that introducing Margaery to Arya was a good idea.  “But your and Marg’s conspiring to embarrass me aside, do you really think it’s dishonest, Arya?  I want you to actually answer that.”

“Why would it be?  It’s not like you created something that copies anything other the history of this country,” Arya looks thoughtful.  “People know that story, Sansa, it’s really popular online.  I mean, even the guys in rosenstag were reading it before you met them.  And dad said that the lady who wants to publish it knew about it too.”

“That’s just because she probably employs someone troll the Internet looking for content.”  She falters, corrects herself.  “Trawl, not troll, little sister.  I can see the joke coming all the way from Winterfell and I assure you, it won’t be funny.”

“Oh you’re no fun at all.” Arya pouts.

“I aim to please,” she quips with a smile as Arya scowls at her over their video connection. 

She is worried about what might happen in the editing process – Sansa prides herself in being easy to work with, but she’s not entirely sure that she can handle that much red pen. At least she’s pretty sure that all of her historical information is factually correct.  She’d spend so much time on her fact checking that anything less than perfection was unacceptable. 

Sansa is lost in her thoughts when Arya sets aside her bowl, a positively wicked smile putting at her lips.  “So you and Margaery have finally decided to make it official?” 

If she’s really honest, she’d expected Margaery, rather than the _Love is a Battlefield_ related stress to be what Arya latched onto during their conversation.  Her amusement over Sansa’s continued confusion over just what she feels towards Margaery has been something for the ages.  Arya had been there before, for the disaster during Sansa’s first year, and she understood, at least on some level, how frightened Sansa had been by the force her attraction to that girl.  Arya had been there for those tear-filled nights over the winter holiday when Sansa had still been reeling at how it had ended.

Margaery isn’t like that – she did not expect the world from Sansa after only a few stolen kisses and one passionate night that Sansa still tries not to think too hard about.  It’s easier with Margaery, easier and it makes more sense now that she’s older.  There are endless possibilities within Margaery and even Arya, who is unusually dense when it comes to matters of the heart, could see how good they were to each other.

“I’m not sure,” Sansa confesses, fiddling with her mug.  “I mean, it seems that way, at least it does to me. But Margaery isn’t me, you know, Arya? She’s terribly worldly and so full of ambition that sometimes I feel caught up in her whirlwind and that I’m losing myself in her.”

Arya blows a raspberry.  “That’s bull and you know it.  Margaery adores you, Sansa.  She’s encouraging you to do what you love and is still doing her own thing too.  That means that she trusts you enough to not put on airs around you.  She respects you and wants you to like her for who she really is.”  Arya tilts her head to one side.  “I mean, you let her around Jon, so you obviously want to do the same.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“What does she say about the publishing deal?”

“That I should get a good lawyer before I sign anything, but that I should go for it.”

Arya shrugs, “Well, her grandmother does secretly run the nation’s food supplies, so I suppose she’d know when to call a lawyer.”

Sansa laughs, because that sounds like something that a certain slightly paranoid, but generally loveable member of their family would say, rather than Arya. “Have you been talking to Robb again?”

“Someone’s got to. He just sits in his room and mopes otherwise.  Mum is totally over it and wants him to get a job.  Or a girlfriend.  Even Jon has a girlfriend.”

Robb’s is a sad story, and one that is not oftentimes mentioned between them.  He’d fallen in love with a girl while he was engaged to another woman and things had escalated to his very public departure from the public sphere as a promising young politician.  Sansa hates what they’d done to him, and hates even more that now Robb probably can never follow her father into politics.  The burden has fallen onto Sansa’s shoulders, and while it’s a fascinating subject that she adores, she doesn’t like the expectation that the only reason she’s doing it at all is because it is what is ‘expected’ of her.  No one in her family expects anything from her, and that’s why they work as Starks.

“At least Theon doesn’t,” Arya adds, looking pensive at mentioning their foster brother.  “He and Robb were out in the woods the other day and ‘looking for arrowheads’ or something. They found some baby birds that Robb is now attempting to fledge.  Boys.”  She shakes her head.  “I think you should hear her out, Sans, get a lawyer to look over the contract if you must.  Or maybe just ask if Margaery’s grandmother can do it for you.”

“I haven’t even met the woman!” Sansa protests. Margaery keeps offering, but the Tyrell matriarch is mildly terrifying, to put it lightly and Sansa’s afraid she’ll make a fool of herself.

“She gave you a houseplant,” Arya says with a raised eyebrow.  “Everyone knows that in Tyrell-speak that’s basically like being welcomed into the family.”

Sansa very much doubts that _everyone_ knows that, but in the circles that their family runs in, it might as well be common knowledge.  “I just worry that they’ll make me change the story or something.  Make them not Ryan and Tyler anymore.”

Arya shrugs. “Just see what happens, Sans, it can’t hurt.”

No, Sansa supposes.  It really can’t.

-

It is a strange feeling to call the cultural minister on her private line on a Friday afternoon.  It's now or never: Sansa has spent the entire week mulling over the offer of a sit down with Melisandre's company, talking it over with Margaery and Arya until she feels as though she's beaten the issue to death.  After her conversation with Arya on Tuesday, Sansa had become even more resolved to go ahead with the offer to at least begin to approach a publishing contract.

She had only been able to shake the nagging feeling of doubt after speaking to Loras when he'd come over on Wednesday to check on the plant that she and Margaery had set up Sansa's kitchen window.

"Would you guys care if I did it?" She'd asked, putting the kettle on for tea as Loras poked at the plant with a pensive expression on his face. She'd explained to him what was happening after he'd offered her a congratulatory hug and slap on the back ostensibly 'from Renly.'  They were waiting on Margaery, who was due back in a few minutes and they apparently had some sort of family lunch with their eldest brother who was in town for some sort of business venture.  Sansa still didn't think that she and Margaery were quite at the point in their relationship where there was a sense of needing to know where the other was constantly, but it was quickly becoming the sort of thing that she found herself contemplating on a regular basis.

They weren't officially dating, not yet.  There had been a lot of kissing, a lot more than kissing really, but there had never been an expectation of exclusivity.  At the back of her mind, Sansa knew that that was what she wanted, and she was pretty sure that that was what Margaery wanted as well.

It was just the challenge of asking, and Sansa found herself with her tongue caught up in her throat every time she thought she'd found an in to ask Margaery.  Arya, naturally, had told her that they were already at that point.  Sansa wasn't - isn't - so quick to believe it though.  She wants it spelled out.

"Publish?"  Loras had shaken his head, pulling a few dead buds from the plant's leaves.  "Not at all.  Renly loves the idea of a story like that being out there for kids."  He eyed Sansa, appearing to size her up.  "Are you going to do it?"

"I think I am," Sansa had said and he'd pulled her into another, this time one-armed hug and had wished her all the luck in the world.

Sansa liked Loras, she liked how he and Margaery were thick as thieves and how easily Loras and Renly had welcomed her into their circle. She'd never made friends particularly easily, and she'd always blamed it on growing up with a bunch of boys (and Arya). She had always been told that she overcompensated her femininity because of it, trying to make herself stand out as being the only girly one in the entire Stark-and-extended-wards-and-family clan.  Her mother thought it was hilarious and had spent much of Sansa's final year living at home trying to get her to calm down about it.

That had been when Sansa and Joffrey had started dating, and it hadn't been until Sansa had ended it that she'd really, she felt, started to come into her own as truly her own person.  She never felt as though she had to put on airs around them, or pretend to be anyone other than herself.  She fit easily, and it was that ease that Sansa found herself craving and desperately wanting to embrace.

And besides, Loras had rescued her from Joff, he was her knight in super shiny rainbow armor.

She wishes that she isn't sitting alone in her apartment making this call.  Her heart is pounding in her ears as she dials and then brings the phone up to ear to listen to the steady pulse of the ringer.  She's tethered to her charger though, having just gotten off the phone with Jon - who's having some sort of relationship crisis because he 'knows nothing' about anything. Sansa doesn't get Ygritte at all, but she doesn't think she's supposed to.  Jon is absolutely over the moon for her though, so Sansa had tried to fix it, watching as the clock over her stove counted down the slowly evaporating business day.

She'd eventually begged off, because this call must be made today or else she's sure to chicken out over the weekend.

"Hello?"

Pulled from thoughts of Jon and his relationship troubles, Sansa starts, shaking herself back into composure and professionalism.  "Yes, um, hello, this is Sansa Stark, I was wondering if I could speak to Ms. Melisandre?"  She's never actually been sure if the woman has a last name or not. The newspapers debate it sometimes, but she's definitely a one-name woman, the more that Sansa thinks about it.  It suits her.

"Sansa! Hello!" She's greeted with a warm chuckle that does nothing to quell Sansa's nervousness.  "I'm sorry for springing myself on you in your father's office like that.  We had a meeting and he mentioned you and... Well, I felt compelled to introduce myself to you."

A little skeptical, Sansa frowns.  She's heard stories about Melisandre's faith and how it drives her every action.  Sometimes the more outspokenly liberal papers call her a zealot, but Sansa's learned to read between the lines and doesn't think there's anything wrong with having faith or even having it publicly.  However, she really, really doesn't want to hear that the Lord of Light had anything to do with Melisandre's interest in her. "Really?"

She's answered with a sigh.  "I employ a few people to be on the watch for new talent - scouts if you will - or spies, to fit with your narrative.  Your story caused quite the to-do when you first posted it, even among the more reputable circles."

Sansa bites her lip and says nothing, she had no idea people were reading it.  She wants to ask why, but the words feel stuck in her throat.

"There's a real dearth of well-written historical fiction from that period, you know?  It's all boring for the most part, but your story had intrigue and romance.  You've done something that very few authors, at least that I know of, have ever attempted.  And you've done it well."  Sansa feels a flush rise at her cheeks.  She's sure she's as read as her hair and suddenly she's very grateful that Margaery isn't here to coo at her and tell her she's adorable when she's embarrassed.  "But more importantly," Melisandre continues, "People like you, fanish people, they're everywhere.  One of my editors is a big rosenstag fan," Melisandre's smile is evident in her tone and Sansa feels herself start to breathe a little easier.  "He was pretty disappointed when you took it down, though. But if you were looking to publish it, I totally understand you doing it, it was a smart thing to do."

She takes a gamble, telling the truth, but Sansa knows that she shouldn't lie, especially not to someone who has the potential to make her career as a writer.  It's a career she still isn't sure that she wants, but she does want to try and see how _Love is a Battlefield_ will do on the market.  "I actually took it down for a different reason, but if you think that it was reasonable, that's okay."

"Do you mind if I ask why?"

Sansa pauses, just for a second, thinking about how Margaery's always joking about how Renly and Loras being in a band is one of the worst-kept secrets in King's Landing. She's hung up on the fact that her father is the Interior Minister and she had no idea they were rosenstag.  Melisandre functions as an advisor to Stannis, who, according to Renly, hates fun, banjos and music in general.

"I met the band," she ventures tentatively.

"Oh thank goodness," Melisandre laughs and sounds utterly relieved.  "I was worried I was going to have to keep it a secret from you.  You're... what, involved with one of them?"

This secret, however, Sansa knows that she cannot tell.  Margaery has explained that it's not so much Loras as it is Renly.  The band is a poorly-kept secret as it is, but the other one is known only to a select few within the Prime Minister's inner circle.  Sansa isn't even sure that her father knows about Renly and Loras and she's not about to go outing anyone she doesn't have to.  "I'm friends-" and she hates that she's said friends and not dating or spending copious amounts of time kissing, "with Margaery Tyrell.  It sort of... come up one night."

"Ah."

"Yeah, talk about awkward."

"Well, so you took it down.  Do they know about it?"

"Loras thinks it's the most tragically romantic thing he's ever read and Renly hasn't said it in so many words, but I know he liked it a lot."  Sansa shrugs, even though she's on the phone.  "They both were following it before they met me, though.  That was awkward to discover.  Marg thinks the whole thing is hilarious, because she's awful."

"I've met her, dear, that girl has a well-developed sense of humor."  Melisandre laughs.  "Regardless, though, I'm grateful that they're accepting.  Stories like this are tricky, because they're obviously inspired by real people --"

"Well," Sansa ventures.  "I actually have two versions of the story. One that's already scrubbed and has some of the imagery that I erm --  pulled from the band taken out."

Melisandre makes a humming noise at the back of her throat.  "Have you got a pen?" she asks.

It's quick then, to take down an email address and to send off both documents, and then Sansa finds herself laughing with this strange woman.  "I've never met a follower of the Lord of Light before," she says, because it's conversational, "but I did a lot of research for the story."

"Ah, yes, the origins of the faith where around then," Melisandre says, sounding almost nostalgic.  "That was an interesting time."

And it's then, gushing about interesting historical facts that Sansa finally catches herself relaxing.  The conversation flows easily.  They talk for close to an hour before Melisandre has to go.

"I will take a look at what you've sent me, but I think I want to have them offer you a contract anyway.  It'll be a good way to start your career Sansa.  Being published at your age is rare."

-

Excitement curls at the pit of Sansa's stomach as Margaery takes her hand and leads her not towards the front door of the concert venue, but towards the back.  They have backstage passes slung around their necks, coded red for friends and family of the performers and the scary bouncer at the door simply nods and allows them inside.

Renly and Loras have a dressing room that they're sharing and Margaery makes a point of waiting a few long seconds after she knocks before she pushes the door open.  "Last time I came in here," she explains in a conspiratorial whisper, "I saw something I can never unsee."

"Oh..." Sansa makes a face.  "Gross."

"Exactly," Margaery agrees, crossing her arms over her chest and clearly counting under her breath.  After what is probably a count of thirty, she pushes the door open and tentatively sticks her head around.  Renly is standing in the middle of the room, buttoning up his vest.  His mask is sitting on top of his head and Loras is on a chair, armed with a hot glue gun, doing a last minute repair on Renly's antlers.

"Hey Marg," Loras says, giving a half-hearted salute with his glue gun.  "Guess what broke again."

Sansa watches with an amused smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as Margaery marches across the room and shoos Loras down for the chair, taking the glue gun and headband that he hands her and twisting it around so as to properly attach the antlers.  "Do they break often?"

Loras tugs at his ear and glares at the antlers.  "All the time.  Once, they broke during a show and Renly thought it'd be hilarious to twist the headband around and be a unicorn.  I'm surprised it didn't catch on."

"It kept jabbing me in the eye," Renly points out, tugging down his mask so that Margaery can put help him put his antlers on.  "So while it looked brilliant, it was entirely impractical."

"Yes, yes," Loras waves a dismissive hand, rolling his eyes. "It was exceptionally gay is what it was."

Renly pulls a face and Margaery is giggling, climbing down from the chair and handing Loras back his glue gun.

There's a knock at the door and Sansa turns and just about jumps out of her skin.  Dany Targaryen is one of the biggest singers in the country right now, if not this part of the world, and to see her smiling politely, head just barely poking around the door, is enough to utterly floor Sansa.

"Oh," Dany says, "I didn't realize you had company, I can come back."

"No, no, it's fine," Renly says, pushing his mask back up on top of his head. "Wardrobe malfunction." He gestures to Margaery, "This is Loras' sister Margaery, and that's her girlfriend, Sansa."

And there's a moment where Sansa wants to be swallowed by the floor as she finds herself under an intense stare.  "Your father is in the government, isn't he? Ned Stark, right?"

Sansa nods.  "He's the PM's chief advisor on domestic policy, um, the interior minister."  She shrugs sheepishly. She's never really been one for talking up her family name.

"He does good work, you should be proud," Dany says, and breezes past her to fully enter the room.  Sansa blinks, but Margaery is already scooting towards the door, Loras shooting her a pointed look.  "I wanted to talk to you about that song..."

Margaery's fingers close around Sansa's and she's being pulled from the room, a whisper in her ear about it being a surprise and that they mustn't ruin it by eves dropping.  They end up sitting on the back of some instrument cases, talking to Brienne and Dany Targaryen's drummer.  Dany's sound is a lot harder than Renly and Loras', and Sansa finds herself caught up in the conversation.  She knows a fair bit about music, Jon and Robb both played guitar in their moody teenage years, and Bran is decent on a fiddle and plays at the holidays.  She doesn't know anything about drums though, and it's an informative conversation.

It is only later, when they've drawn close to watch Loras and Renly perform, that Sansa feels the butterflies in her stomach start to rage again.  She doesn't know why she's anxious, but Margaery's hand is tight in her own.  It feels good, and she leans in, pressing her lips to Margaery's cheek.

"We should do this more," she says quietly, as the conversation quiets into a lull.  "Go out like this."

A fond smile that pulls at Margaery's lips.  Her fingers tangle more tightly in Sansa's and she steps in front of Sansa.  They're eye to eye now, Margaery's eyes twinkling mischievously.  "Like dates?" she asks tentatively.  There's something telling about the way her lips quirk upwards that makes Sansa feel as though she's missed something important.

"Yes."  Deciding that she wants to be firm about this, Sansa nods just once.  "Like dates."

"And your taking me to see your sister's tournament wasn't a date?"  Margaery's smile is growing wider and Sansa's cheeks feel warm with the blush she knows is spreading across her cheeks.  "And all the study get-togethers... and going out for coffee and to supervise my brother and his boyfriend at karaoke nights?  None of those were dates?"

"Not like... official ones," Sansa hedges.

Margaery rises up on her toes and throws her arms around Sansa's neck.  "You silly, darling girl," she mumbles, lips nearly kissing Sansa's. "If you are asking for this to just be us then yes, a thousand times yes."

The kiss that follows is initiated by Sansa, who pulls Margaery in her sundress close and kisses her like it's the movies and it's going out of style.  She feels bold, drunk on this feeling.  All around her the crowd is roaring and the lights have gone dark.  The show is starting and Sansa can feel the bass of the first song start to pound in her ears, echoing her racing pulse.  Margaery is laughing, pressing their foreheads together as she pulls away, her eyes alight with something that Sansa's never seen before.

"I think I'm falling in love with you," Sansa confesses, fiddling with a lock of Margaery's hair that's strayed to curl into her eye.  She tucks it behind Margaery's ear and bites her lip.  "And it's all I've ever wanted."

The crowd is roaring, but when Margaery kisses her and half-shouts words into Sansa's ear over the bass and Renly's banjo, Sansa doesn't hear anything at all.  She hears: 'I could spend forever like this' and 'I think I already love you Sansa.'  There is a ringing in her ears as the familiar beats of _Wolfgirl_ begin and Margaery rises up on her toes and presses her lips to Sansa's once more.  "My wolfgirl," she adds.  She wraps one arm around Sansa, her other rising up into the air as they sing the familiar words of _Wolfgirl_ at the top of their lungs.

Up on the stage, Sansa can see that Renly's antler is already starting to come unglued again and it gives him this wild look, as opposed to Loras' flower crown.  Together, they cut a commanding image on stage, Brienne in the back keeping them in line on the drums, her mask askew and her drumsticks moving so fast that they're almost a blur.

There's a break after _Wolfgirl_ that has Margaery leaning against Sansa, her arm wrapped around Sansa's waist.

"How was that?" Renly shouts into the microphone.  His banjo is slung over his back, its neck pointing down towards the ground.  It's at that moment that his antler falls off.  "Oh damn," he adds, pulling it the rest of the way off.  "Guess I get to stop being a stag for the night," he jokes, tugging on the headband that still sports one antler around so that it's right smack dab in his forehead.  "Who thinks I look like a cartoon character now?"

Laughing gleefully, Sansa joins in the catcalling and hears Margaery shout that he looks like a gay unicorn.  Loras apparently hears her, because he's bent over his keyboard, busted up laughing.  He leans over to the mic and adds, all charming and sounding a lot different than the Loras Sansa has come to think of as a friend.  "Someone said you look like a gay unicorn."

"Guess we should change the name of the band to rosencorn then?"  Brienne plays a rimshot and is shaking her head at the pair of them, but there's an amused smile on her face.  The crowd is howling with laughter.

"I think not," Loras has a disdainful note in his voice.  "We just need better antlers."

"Clearly," Renly replies.  "Anyway," he says, an amused smile playing at his lips. "Here's _Out on the Wall_."

There's a thrill of excitement that is coursing through the entire venue, and Sansa can feel it everywhere she turns.  Margaery has this knowing smile on her face, she knows something is coming and she hasn't told Sansa what it is.

They come out for a second encore, playing a variation of _Wolfgirl_ that segues into this soft beat that Loras can play with one hand on the keyboard with some occasional cymbal taps from Brienne.  Renly steps forward.  "Okay, this next song is a new one, and I'm sure some of you have already heard it on the radio.  We needed an extra guitarist for it though, so we borrowed the best one in the house."

Sansa's mind is racing a mile a minute, trying to figure out when rosenstag had dropped a new single without her knowing about it.

"And, let's be honest with ourselves, most of you are here to see her anyway," Renly adds with a wink that's barely visible through his mask.

Sansa's scream joins the rest of the crowd's when Dany Targaryen steps out onto the stage, a guitar slung over her shoulder.  She takes a cord from a helpful roadie and plugs it in, smiling and waving, her white blonde hair looking almost ghostly in the stage lights.  She's wearing a blue dress and combat boots and looking very out of place amidst the impossibly preppy look of rosenstag's pressed shirts and smart vests.

"You have no idea how much they begged me to do this," Dany jokes as she checks the tune on her guitar.  She's standing next to Reny and sharing his microphone.  Sansa is positively vibrating with excitement and Margaery has this broad smile on her face like a cat who's just eaten the family canary.

"You knew?" Sansa hisses.  She's trying to keep her voice down in case the people around them are listening.  She doesn't want to out them both as friends of the mysterious rosenstag.

"Just you wait," Margaery replies.

"But," Dany continues, "It's a great song, so I figured why not."

Loras leans over to his mic.  "I owe her my soul and about a dozen remixes.  Keep an eye out for them, they'll be up on soundcloud just as soon as I'm done with them."

"This one is called _Into the Rose Garden_ ," Renly adds.  The stage goes completely black and all that can be heard is the slow tap of Brienne's drumstick on the high hat.

There's an eerie feel to this song, as it starts.  Sansa can hear the banjo and the guitar as they meld together into Loras' beats almost effortlessly.  Her breath catches in her throat as Dany Targaryen opens her mouth and lets out a unearthly wail.

Renly starts to sing and Sansa's fingers rise up to cover her lips.  She knows what this song is about from the first line, she knows what this song is about and she's ... she doesn't know how to feel.

"They wrote this..."  She says, half to herself as the quiet melody starts to build and Renly and Dany start to harmonize the chorus.  "They wrote this because of my story."

Margaery is beaming.  "They wrote this because it was a beautiful story with so much truth in it that they couldn't resist."

  
 _"Your lips sing songs of days of old_  
and my bones grow weary still  
of fighting cold and thankless wars  
there cannot be peace until  
the roses boom anew."

It is a strange song, full of longing and desperation, the feelings of war that Sansa had worked so hard to capture while she worked on _Love is a Battlefield_.  It feels like the angst and the pain that she'd wanted to capture and it feels like something entirely different.  Renly and Loras have taken her story and twisted it, captured their own feelings of longing and desperation and used Dany Targaryen's voice to make it entirely their own.

And it is beautiful.

-

Sansa ends up jumping up to give Renly a full body hug when they slip backstage during the break between sets. He's sweaty and still wearing his one antler, but he hugs her back and laughs loudly and brightly as she gushes her praise of _Into the Rose Garden_.

"Glad you liked it," he says, spinning her around.  "Margaery worked really hard to make sure you didn't find out."

Once her feet are back on the ground, Sansa turns to Margaery - her girlfriend Margaery - who is beaming at her and looking impossibly pleased with herself.  "You are a sneaking sneaker!"  She shakes her finger accusingly at Margaery, but she's smiling all the same.  It truly was a lovely surprise.

"I'm pretty sure that isn't a word," Margaery says, looking down at her nails.  She's got this giant grin on her face, though, and feigned disinterest is doing very little to hide it. "The look on her face was worth it," she adds, mostly to Loras.  Behind his hand and still sporting his ridiculous solitary antler, Renly lets out a most undignified giggle.

"Considering you both spent half the show making out, I'm surprised you were far enough away from her face to actually see what it looked like."  Loras wrinkles his nose, his expression is teasing.

"I took the time to call Renly a gay unicorn," Margaery points out, half pouting and elbowing her brother.  "And stop it, Loras, you're making Sansa blush."

"I think Sansa can tell me if I'm embarrassing her," Loras points out.

She's a bit distracted, though, pulling out her phone though, and is trying to shoo them all in for a picture.  "I don't mind," she says, stepping back and checking the light on her phone's camera. She has an email notification, but she doesn’t' want to check it, it's probably another anonymous internet person melting down over _Battlefield_.  "Marg and I are officially dating now, so I suppose I'll have to get used to it."

"Wait," Loras says, reaching up to push Renly's mask down into place.  "You weren't before? Really?

Renly makes a sound of agreement and confusion, batting Loras' hand away and pulling a face so Sansa can get a picture.

Margaery laughs.  "Let me take one of you," she says to Sansa, reaching for the phone and switching places with Sansa.  Sansa looks up at Renly's single antler and Loras' flower crown perched at a jaunty angle.  They look absolutely hilarious.  Margaery snaps the picture and then scowls.  "Where's Brie?"

"Probably doing her real job," Renly scowls and glances towards the door.  "Hey Brie!" he calls.

She sticks her head in the door, looking harassed.  "What?"

"Sansa wants to take a picture with all of us," Renly says, making a shooing motion with his hand.  "Come on."

Brienne smiles warmly at Sansa, who grins right back at her.  "Fine, but I'm locking the door.  You have the craziest fans, Renly. The craziest."  She glances down at Sansa, "No offense."

"None taken," Sansa says with a rather undignified giggle.  "Are they trying to break down the door?"

"Not yet, but I wouldn't put it past some of them..." Brienne says grimly.  She leans in and Margaery snaps another picture and passes Sansa's phone back to her.  "You have an email, it won't stop blinking."

"I know," Sansa says, sliding her thumb over the irritating notification.  "It's the publishing contract," she explains after reading over Melisandre's brief message and formal offer letter and contract.  "I probably need a lawyer."

"I could have Stannis look it over..." Renly offers.

"Stannis is dating the publisher," Brienne points out.

Loras nods. "We can get grandmother to give us a name."

"Or look it over herself." Margaery answers.

Sansa nods, laughing and feeling relieved for the first time in weeks.  "Okay."

-

Their first real date is for coffee after a meeting with Margaery's singularly terrifying grandmother.  Sansa thinks she made a good impression, judging by the way Margaery is smiling proudly over latte at her.

"What?" she asks.

"Grandmother likes you," Margaery says.  "She says you have spirit, writing about 'the queers' back in the day."

"Really? I was too scared that I was going to say the wrong thing and offend her.  She's terribly important."  Sansa sighs, thinking of how nervous she'd been and how the Tyrell matriarch had done very little to make her feel at ease.

"Sansa, your adopted uncle is the PM, your father is interior minister.  It's not as though you're not used to rubbing elbows with impossibly important people."  Margaery tilts her head to one side.  "She's not even that scary."

According to Loras, Margaery is the favorite grandchild, so it almost makes sense that she's completely and utterly immune to how terrifying her grandmother is.  "She's scary because she's your gran and I didn't want her thinking I was some sort of ... I don't know.  That I wasn't good enough for you." Sansa looks down at her tea, biting at her lip.

Margaery reaches across the table and squeezes Sansa's hand.  "Don't worry, she likes you and is incredibly flattered that you came to her for legal advice."

They'd signed and then scanned the publishing contract at Margaery's grandmother's office after the meeting, having found nothing wrong with it.  Sansa was officially going to be a published writer.

"Really?"

"Really."

"I'm glad."

Later that night, when they're curled around each other, Sansa types up the message that's now nearly two and a half months in the making.

Posted by **Wolfgirl23** at 11:07 PM in thread 'LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD - FANFIC ROSE/STAG HIST AU':

_Hey everyone,_

_Sorry I haven't been around much these past two months. I've been busy with school and some personal stuff - but mostly I've putting off coming up with a response to every single one of your nice (and not-so-nice) comments about why I took LiaB down._

_The truth of the matter is that at first, it was personal.  I have my reasons and they are totally reasonable, but no, I won't be sharing them with the Internet at large.  The other part of this is that I've been in the process of getting a publishing deal for LiaB (now probably a working title) and am pleased to announce that I have done so.  The story will not go back up, and if you haven't saved a copy, I'm sure you can post here and get one.  I can no longer send you them because of my contract._

_The target publication date is tentatively set for some time this coming spring, so I've got my work cut out for me._

_Thank you for being there with me on this amazing journey._

_ps - I think rosenstag might have read the story._

"There," she says, hitting the post button and leaning back onto the pillow.  "It's sorted."

Margaery smiles slow and easy.  "Does that mean I have you to myself - no more annoying email notifications interrupting me?"

Sansa nods slowly.  "It does."

"Good," Margaery says, and kisses her slow and easy.  There is a promise in that kiss, and Sansa feels herself melt into it.  Margaery rolls onto her back and pulls Sansa with her so that they’re nose to nose, Sansa’s whole body rising and falling with Margaery’s steady breaths.  “I don’t want to share you with anyone anymore.”  She kisses Sansa again, this time it is full of promise and everything that Sansa could have ever wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hello everyone and thank you for coming with me on this journey!
> 
> Some thank yous: Fran + Alex + Caroline & Kat for adding valuable GOT insight, and for Fran, who has allowed me to pick her brain and has put up with me being all: BRIENNE IS THE DRUMMER. MELISANDRE IS THE PUBLISHER. STANNIS HATES FUN AND BANJOS.
> 
> And to you, lovely reader, who saw the summary and were like 'well that doesn't sound horribly OOC or anything' and clicked the link regardless.


	6. Extra - Songs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fully song lyrics just in case y'all were wondering. :)

**Wolfgirl**

I see you

I see you

Little girl lost

(I see you)

 

It was a gray morn when first you came

Down from the northlands, Time's forgotten your name.

I stood at the edge of a cliff and I knew

That the red stone of this place would birth you anew

 

They say there's an old wolf that prowls the moors

of the old northland

in those days of yore

she tilts her head back, her howl does ring true

And she's longing, longing, longing for you.

 

Oh wolfgirl I hope that you'll still be true

To the plight of that love, howling for you

and your heart will be filled with those northlands you knew

and that one day they'll stop

searching for you

 

I see you now wolfgirl

I see you I do

And I can see now what I already knew

Though the northlands run deep

they were never enough

to contain you.

 

I see you

I see you

Little girl found.

 

* * *

 

 

**Into the Rose Garden (ft. Dany Targaryen)**

 

I met you in a rose garden  
caught by the sunlight in our hair.  
one white rose you gave to me  
and the promise of eternity.  
we were destined, you and I.

Our days were few  
cast down in stone before such a love  
could ever grow.   
A battle broke here with the dawn  
And by my sword I swear  
That I will fight to bring you home.

A thousand ships you said to me  
A thousand ships will set us free  
And into the rose garden we will go  
to cast aside the winter's snow.

You are like me, you were so brave  
The rose garden grew within you  
and we are wasted on icy lions.   
For we were destined, you and I  
and a summer's hope blooms in you.

Your lips sing songs of days of old  
and my bones grow weary still  
of fighting cold and thankless wars  
there cannot be peace until  
the roses boom anew.

A thousand ships you said to me  
A thousand ships will set us free  
And into the rose garden we will go  
to cast aside the winter's snow.  
(to cast aside the winter's snow.)


End file.
